Forever, Grey
by Inks Inc
Summary: Sometimes, fate tears you apart just so it can put you back together again, stronger than you were before. (COMPLETE)
1. Chapter 1

She looked at herself in the mirror. Gaunt face, hooded eyes. Lank hair, taut hollowed cheekbones. She glanced around her living room, her gaze feeble. Crumpled up pages of her fifth rejected manuscript littered the floor as a light layer of detritus, hiding the thick layer of dust below. A general aroma of dampness hung in the air. She hadn't opened the windows since the publisher's rejection letter had come through the mailbox. She hadn't been outside since then. She wiped a thin hand across her face, just for the sensation of a human touch, even if it were her own. The flickering red LED of her answer machine caught the corner of her eye and she turned away. Her latest excuse of a viral infection to miss work had gone down like a lead balloon and a pink slip was on the horizon. She sighed. Just barely twenty-seven, she felt aged, vulnerable.

It had been six, long and arduous years.

Still, she thought of him.

Still, she craved him.

Still, she regretted the day when she let those elevator doors slide closed on the life she had been too afraid to admit she desired, too afraid to admit she needed. Sighing, she dropped back on the ratty sofa and rolled over to her side. Her t-shirt that had doubled as her nightdress for the last five days was matted, grubby. Pushing it upwards, she reached back and let her fingers caress the smooth and supple skin of her bared behind. She could still feel his hands there. Could still feel the bite of his wide palm crashing down on her raised and trembling buttocks, could still feel his soft and delicate fingers as he'd explored her, hungry for more and more. His hands had always been so warm, so intricate. But then there'd been that belt. That belt that had been ruination of all. She recalled, as she had done a million times before, the terrifying bite of the leather as it had seared into her skin, marking her like cattle. She heard his groans of ecstasy and remembered the hot, salty tears as they'd coursed down her cheeks.

That belt had been the swift beginning of an even swifter end.

But if she could go back in time, if she could have another chance at understanding…things might have been different. She hadn't really tried to see inside his mind, to comprehend the enigma. The caring and the callous. She hadn't been able to bridge those two together, to see them as two halves of the same person. All she could see was a monster. An animal who got his rocks off as he wailed on her bare skin with a strap of thickest leather. They had moved too fast, and that had been her fault. She'd insisted. She'd ordered, she'd dictated. She had told him in no uncertain terms that she wanted to see the absolute highest end of the spectrum. She'd willingly laid herself bare for him, she'd willingly taken every single stroke.

And then she'd ended things like she was cancelling her cable.

Blowing her limp fringe out of her eyes, she rolled over onto her stomach and buried her head in the sofa cushions. It was getting worse. Day-by-day, it was getting so much worse. The yearning was shifting from psychological to physiological. She tingled when she thought of him, her heart quickened. Her search history was a choreographed time-line of his life since the day she'd walked out on him. He'd never been photographed with another woman. Rumours of his homosexuality were once again rampant. No denials had been issued. His borderline monopolistic industry was booming. Reports of him being voted the USA's most prolific workaholic under forty were rife. His torso was fuller, he'd been working out. He was even more handsome with flecks of grey beginning to prematurely splinter throughout his dark hair, a permanent five-o-clock shadow adorning his chiselled jawline.

As she breathed in the musty scent that seemed to scream of her alone-hood, something seemed to snap.

She couldn't do this anymore.

She was floundering.

She was drowning. She was close to the edge, and another day, week or month without him was suddenly intolerable, unbearable.

She needed him.

She needed him, now.

…

A/N: First fifty shades fic. To be a multi-chaptered one. Not my usual style/fandom, but I've recently been re-bitten by the Christian Grey bug ?

Inks x

…


	2. Chapter 2

His long fingers drummed lazily against the wooden table. The humdrum of yet another business deal was snuffling in his ears, hovering around the peripherals of his unusually grey eyes. He cared not for what they were saying. Beautiful women surrounded him. Their long and supple legs revealed tastefully under tight, waist hugging pencil skirts. Slender ankles swaying softly in his direction, desperate for a reaction. He did not look at them. He did not spare them that courtesy. They were obsolete, superfluous. His mind wandered, as it so often did in these banal gatherings, to a more satisfying visual. Her creamy thighs wrapped around his waist. Her plump lips, parted and sweet, exploring his. His eyes fluttered shut as he drew up one his most revisited memories. The first time he had taken her. The searing rip of her hymen as it splintered under his length. Her groans of pained ecstasy as her girlishness was taken from her. Her warm and accommodating wetness drawing him in deeper and deeper.

"Mr Grey? Did you catch that?"

His eyes flew open and she was gone. The last of her disappearing in a blink, that coy smirk lingering in his mind's eye. He reluctantly focussed. In her place now was a polished and pristine young woman, her gaze hungry for much more than the exorbitant money he paid her. Offering her a bored look, he arched a perfectly shaped brow and spoke quietly.

"Yes, I caught that. Continue."

Slightly wrong footed, the pristine blonde carried on with the financial breakdown of…something he didn't care about, her monotonous voice luring him back to the pleasures of his inner mind. For his memories were the only things that provided him with comfort these days, gave him release. Of course, he'd tried to lose himself by returning to his old ways. His submissive recruitment was back under way about a month after he realised that she was gone and she wasn't ever coming back. His sadistic peak had reached new levels of depravity as he vented his frustrations on the willing flesh of nameless, faceless girls. He didn't see them as he flogged and fucked them. He didn't want to see their unwelcome features. He wanted to close his eyes and pretend that it was her that he entered. But it was never enough and girl after girl had been summarily released from their contracts, his empathy for them at an all-time low. Oh, he ensured they were taken care of as far as their physical needs were concerned. But that was it.

The new girl, Diana, was due to start her service to him tonight.

His cock lay flaccid at the thought.

Slowly, his gaze wandered to the windows of Grey House. It was raining. Hundreds of tiny human figures, hunched against the wind, rushed around below. He knew she was not one of them. He knew she had moved to New York to pursue her writing career. His jaw clenched, as it always did, at the thoughts of her roaming the dangerous streets of the country's most notorious city. He had reluctantly removed the body guards he had quietly put in place for her protection after she had sent an official, clipped e-mail to warn that if he didn't, she would go the police. He had with the greatest difficulty he had ever known, refrained from buying every publishing house she went to with her failed manuscripts, so that he could publish whatever the hell she wanted. He knew her. He knew she would find out and that would just be another drop in her ever-growing pool of hate for him.

Around him, the meeting suddenly broke up.

Rising, he put on the show and morphed into the businessman that they expected. Every day was an act without her. A feverish, fervent one. He had worked in her absence harder than he had ever worked. His enterprise was so staggeringly affluent that it hurt even his head at times. He had more than he could ever want or need and no one to share it with. Nothing to build towards. So, he just kept building aimlessly, a road to nowhere. Because, what else was there? Five minutes later he had escaped the clutches of the ladder climbers, sliding into the back of his town car in relief.

"Take me home, Taylor."

Three hours later saw Diana arriving exactly one hour late.

He rose as she was shown into the expansive living room by the silent Mrs Jones. His jeans hugged his tanned hips as his bare chest glistened in the soft moonlight spilling through the glass wall windows. She was exquisite, there was no denying that. Tall and slender with a soft and angelic face. A full, but taut ass and a naturally endowed bust. He eyed her silently as she walked slowly towards him, her gaze downcast. A natural sub if ever he saw one. He had known it the minute he had laid eyes on her and he had accepted it the moment she put pen to paper and signed herself to him. Her attire was simple but flattering. Coming to a halt in front of him, she spoke not a word and simply waited, studying the floor with her big brown eyes.

He let her wait.

"What time is it, Diana?"

His voice was low and almost silky. But she was no fool and she heard the undercurrent of anger. Biting her lip, she kept her eyes trained downwards and spoke quietly.

"It's eight-o-clock, Sir."

He tilted his head at her, his eyes boring into the mane of soft brown curls.

"Tell me," he breathed, "at what time did I instruct you to be here?"

She licked her lips and shivered where she stood.

"Seven-o-clock, Sir."

Nodding slowly, he moved to circle her. Taking in every inch of her. The soft pad of his bare feet seeming oddly magnified as he appraised her, studied her. She was trembling now. He had a presence. He had a way of making the quietest of words singe like a bellow. As he stalked around her back, she braced herself, her eyes still firmly downcast. After an eternity, he finished his rotation and came to a standstill in front of her, his eyes suddenly ablaze. When he spoke once more, his voice became imbued with a certain distancing, a certain frostiness.

"You are going to be severely punished, Diana. If there is one thing I do not tolerate, it is tardiness. Do you understand?"

Her heart skipped enough beats to nearly qualify as a murmur.

"Yes Sir," she whispered, "I understand."

He appreciated that she didn't ruin the thrill that was beginning to course through him by looking up.

That way, he could carry on the pretence.

She could still be someone else.

"You will go to the play room. You will strip. You will kneel by the door. I will be there in ten minutes."

She did not hesitate, she did not argue and she did not question. Turning, she spun delicately on her heel and made her way with her eyes still downcast to the room she had briefly been introduced to. He watched her go and allowed himself the relief of what was to come. She had practically no hard limits. She was experienced. She was eager. He could whip her all night long and she wouldn't utter a word of complaint. Just as the thought of snapping the flogger down across those willing cheeks was beginning to entice him, Mrs Jones ruined the brief and rare moment of excitement by entering the room after a brief knock.

"What?" he snapped, before biting his lip and controlling himself. Slipping back into the well raised and privileged Christian Grey persona, he offered the long-suffering housekeeper a small smile of apology. "What can I do for you, Mrs Jones?"

She held out the phone with an unusually hesitant expression.

"You have a call, Mr Grey."

He shook his head, once again irritated. She knew better than to interrupt nights such as these with trivialities such as phone calls.

"Get rid of them. No more interruptions please, Mrs Jones."

She bit her lip, sucking in a deep lungful of air. She was clearly terrified.

"Mr Grey, please…I think you might want to take this."

He shot her a look of pure venom as she held the phone out further still.

"It's Miss Steele, for you Mr Grey…. Miss Anastasia Steele."

….

TBC

A/N: Thanks for the warm welcome to this fandom, guys!

Inks x

…


	3. Chapter 3

Two thousand, one hundred and ninety-one days. (There'd been a leap year)

Three hundred and twelve weeks. (The weekends were the hardest. Especially Saturdays)

Seventy-two months. (She'd been mentioned at every single Christmas dinner. His mother, always)

That's how long it had been since he'd last heard from her, last felt her. Excepting the officious e-mail she had sent his secretary, about the body guards, she had melted from his life like water trickling from his cupped hands. He had always clung to his dignity in life. He had hand-crafted it. It was his only armour against the outside world. But he had cast that dignity down into the gutter, for her. He had pleaded with her answering machine, placed extra work upon her mailman with unrequited letters of explanation. He had pushed even the patience of the ever-patient Taylor as he'd pulled up alongside her on the sidewalk, like some idiotic teenager, on her way to work. She'd skirted him, dashed into whatever nearby store was the vastest, never sparing him a single syllable. Then she'd stopped working altogether, packed up her belongings and left for New York.

And now, at eight-o-clock on a dreary Wednesday night, she was calling him.

Six tenths of a decade down the line.

Three million, one hundred and forty-four thousand, nine hundred and sixty minutes later.

He stared at the phone, his pulse racing dangerously. The hairs on the back of his neck were beginning to quiver. Was she really on the other end of that receiver? Breathing on the other end of that receiver? Being _her_ on the other end of that receiver? His heart skipped a beat. Was she sick? Hurt? Financially destitute? Why was she calling, why now? He shouldn't answer. He definitely shouldn't answer. There was barely a scab covering the gaping wound she had carved into him with her abrupt departure from his life. Hearing her voice would only rip that wound to shreds, cutting him, tearing him apart. Causing him to bleed out what little will to live remained to him.

Again.

But she was his undefended and unparalleled weakness. She always had been. From the day she had fallen head first into his office at Grey House. From the day she had cheeked him, smirked at him, rolled her eyes at him. All the way through to the day he had bent her over, pulled the panties down from her trembling cheeks and with six short strokes of thickest leather, had send her running for the hills. He took a deep breath, determining his future in a split second. His hand snaked out of its own accord. He wrenched the phone from Mrs Jones who promptly took her leave. Striding over to the windows and staring down upon a dusky Seattle, he tore a hand through his hair. He could hear her. She was there. She was breathing, she was _being._ His breath condensed on the glass pane as he struggled to find the words, any words. Fortunately or unfortunately, his mouth had always been independent of his brain.

"Miss Steele."

His breath seemed to travel hundreds of miles through the receiver and blow sweetly into her ear. Sat upright on the sofa now, with her knees drawn tightly to her chest, her fingers trembled. His voice…it was as she remembered it. Deep and soft, musical and refined. Her heart stilled in her chest. This was a madness. What the hell was she thinking? The last time she had seen him in the flesh, heard his urgent voice…she'd been running away from him. Literally. She should hang up. Immediately. She should hang up and summarily down the half bottle of wine that glimmered up from the skewed coffee table. Closing her eyes as shame washed over, she shook her head violently at her stupidity and twitched her finger to end the ill-advised call.

"I can hear you breathing, Anastasia, I know you are there."

A valid point, well made.

"Christian."

He barely stifled a gasp. Leaning against the window, the cool glass chilling his torso, he closed his eyes. Her voice. Ana's voice. His Ana's voice. He allowed it to wash over him. Swallowing, he seized a rough handful of his hair and tried to focus. His brow was dampening with an uncharacteristic sweat as he stood, with her breathing in his ear, valiantly trying to get his shit together.

"To what do I owe the pleasure, Miss Steele?"

His façade faltered, his voice became much more Christian Grey than Mr Grey.

"Are you ok? Anastasia, tell me right now, is everything alright?"

She bowed her head as the concern oozed from his tongue. After all this time. He was still the same. Safety first. To her intense shame, tears suddenly welled in her eyes. It had been six years since someone had made her feel that cherished, that worthy of protection. Of course, Chad had tried, he really had. And he was, for a nice, normal and utterly _not_ fucked up girl, a catch. A keeper. And she had grown to resent him, deeply resent him. Not because he was a bad guy, far from it. Not because he treated her poorly, even further from it. But because he wasn't _him._ Because he blinked at her innocently when she tried to inject a little kinky fuckery into the bedroom. Because he had withdrawn, horrified, when she had coyly suggested he ought to be a little rougher. Ought to be a little more forceful, dominant. Because he had suggested they simply hold each other until they fell asleep, that she must be exhausted and wrung out from writing, didn't know what she was saying.

Chad had lasted for about fifteen months before they parted ways.

Rhys, equally as doting and equally as adoring, had lasted only seven months.

That had been thirteen months ago.

And it had been abstinence, loneliness and sexual destitution since then.

"Anastasia! Answer me."

His throat was beginning to close. Was she ill? Terminally? What the hell was the matter with her? Why was she ringing him up after more than a half decade to breathe down the phone at him? Was what she needed to say, too terrible to hear? His chest was beginning to contract, the panic that he still battled on a daily basis, threatening to engulf him. His breath shimmered on the window pane as he drew in a tight breath. A mere few hours ago he had been staring, as he so often did, out at a nameless, faceless crowd wondering where she was, what she was doing. If she was happy, if she was taking care of herself. If she was ever going to get out of his fucking head. And now, here she was, in his head and in his ear. Saying nothing, not a thing, just _breathing._

"What do you want, Anastasia? It's been six years with not a word. Tell me what you want."

He heard her lips part, the peeling of the plump flesh he had loved, and felt the blood begin to rush.

"I wanted…" her voice was quiet, strained…contemplative. "To say hello."

His eyes bulged, darkening pools of swirling grey.

"You wanted to say hello…" he repeated, incredulously, "That's it? You wanted to say _hello?"_

She flushed. A scarlet hue covered her face and neck and as she felt it burn, her mind fluttered back to the similar redness that had once coated her shivering ass. The redness that had been painted on, thick and thorough, by his hands of expertise. She swallowed. She could not think of that now. Those were her private thoughts, for her private times. Not for her impromptu, idiotic and downright desperado phone calls to estranged billionaires. A lock of grease riddled hair slid into her eyes, and she pushed it impatiently away.

"Uhm, yes," she muttered, "I wanted to, you know, say…hi."

Her entire body was beginning to flare up with shame.

No wonder she couldn't make it as a writer.

She couldn't even _speak_ fluently in her native tongue.

His head shook in disbelief of its own accord. Still so _unusual._ He had known many woman, carnally and socially, and none of them had ever been so much as an inch like her. Which is why he'd been drawn to her. Like a stupid, suicidal moth to a fire so innocent, it didn't even know it was a fire. He looked out onto the twinkling Seattle skyline and closed his eyes. The protective persona of the unaffected and aloof Mr Grey was pushing to the fore, desperate to shield him, Christian. But as a rarity, the weak lambasted the armour and it was he at his core who spoke.

"Well then, I guess a hello to you too, Ana," he murmured, "It's good to hear your voice again."

Her shoulders slumped as his purest form broke through, savouring it, knowing it was fleeting.

It always had been.

Fleeting.

She opened her mouth to ask a safe question, a courteous question. Something to fill the screaming silence. Something like _how have you been_ or _how have things been going for you._ But that's not what came out. No, she was far too moronic for that. She was far too moronic to not to have called in the first place. She couldn't keep it in any longer, couldn't keep lying to herself. Her life had gone to shit. It was in ruination. She had bounced from relationship to relationship, job to job and Ana to Ana since she'd walked out on him those six years ago. And still, she wasn't whole. The righteous, self-sufficient and independent parts of her screamed orders to shut her fucking mouth. He didn't need to hear this, he didn't _deserve_ the satisfaction. She was pathetic, she was a doormat. But she pushed those voices down because she was too exhausted from the pretence.

Her voice was a whisper. It was easier to tell the truth when she didn't have to hear it quite as loud.

"I miss you."

His trachea near splintered with the force of his inhaled breath.

Slumping to the floor, he put the phone on speaker and set it beside him, facing out into the now night sky with his mind whirring. He could process multimillion dollar deals at a lightning pace. At just thirty-three years old, he was the envy of the young social elite, such was his quick-thinking mind and his intuitive grasp on life. But in that moment, he couldn't offer much more than a slack jaw and a gormless gaze. Did he miss her, too? Every single fucking day, every single hour. Did he want her back? More than anything in the world. Could he admit that, put himself on the ledge of self-destruction once more and see where it took them?

He wasn't sure.

He thought of her. Of the first moment he laid eyes on her.

Dowdy, clumsy and naïve.

That's what he'd thought as he'd plucked her with ease from his office floor. A train wreck. But then he'd looked into her face, her eyes. Breathed her scent, sensed her vulnerability. And something in him had awoken. More than the dominant tingling he felt when he first identified a possible sub, though, there was that. And it was more than a sexual attraction. When she had opened her mouth and started to speak, he found himself enchanted by her, transfixed by her. When she openly mocked him, he found himself shocked by her, stunned by her.

And attracted as all manner of hell to her.

They'd come a long way since that first encounter. In more ways than one. She'd changed him, irrevocably. She'd softened him, humanised him. She'd been convinced of the idea, the notion, that he had _good_ in him. Purity, in him. Of that, he remained convinced of her error. He was a bastard. Through and through. He knew that, he accepted and embraced it. His lack of basic socialisation was a key factor to his success. Everyone was a component in his overall plan. Nothing more. His subs were a distraction that were viable only so far as their novelty remained. They were dispensable, replaceable. A commodity to be used and exhausted the same as any other.

But then Anastasia Steele had literally fallen headfirst into his life and fucked his world view up.

Fucked _him,_ up.

And now here she was again, blazing into his life.

Fucking him up.

Mr Grey rose up in him like a wounded dragon, snorting flames of defensive ire. She had left him. She had demanded that he show her how bad it could get. She had insisted. She knew he could deny her nothing. He had obliged. He had acquiesced, after he had let her in. To his life. His _real_ life. In a way he had let in no other. He had done as she had asked. He had fed her no illusions, no lies. He had laid himself bare for her, in all his fifty shades of fucked up glory.

He had trusted her.

And then she had walked out the door, with that trust in hand, and never looked back.

Mr Grey spread scaly, dragon wings and prepared to incinerate the threat this uninvited caller posed, with words of vicious fire.

But in the end, it was Christian, just Christian, that spoke.

"I miss you, too."

An explosive silence ensued. Ana felt an elation tinged with uncertainty course through her. Christian felt an uncertainty tinged with hope fill him. Neither uttered a syllable, simply listening to the rising and falling breaths of the other. It was soothing, in a way. To hear the oxygen intake of the other. To know that they were still real, still present. That neither was the figment of the other's imagination. Ana stared at the yellowed walls of her shitheap apartment as Christian sat and viewed Seattle from his penthouse suite.

Both still on opposite ends of the other's world.

The comfortable silence was just reaching its peak of amiability when disaster struck.

He didn't hear or see it coming.

"Sir?" Diana purred, loudly, "I'm ready to accept my punishment now. It's been twenty minutes."

Jolting, having completely forgotten her entire existence, Christian twisted violently to face the naked woman with blood beginning to thunder in his ears. His mouth contorted into a hard line as his grey gaze flickered to the on-speaker phone. After a moment of heart-pounding indecision, he lunged for it, desperate to…he didn't know what.

But he was too late.

Having heard it all, she was gone.

Bringing the phone swiftly to his ear, he was just in time to hear it.

Hear the ringing finality of the click as she hung up the phone without another word. His long fingers curled around the receiver, crushing it, as a dangerous temper began to work its way through his body. He looked up from his bare feet to see a flicker of real fear cross across Diana's face, her pert breasts suddenly disgusting to him in that moment. The down of her soft pubic hair instigating a splutter of bile in his throat. His fingers curled even tighter around the phone, a red mist descending across his eyes. She had been so close, he could hear her. He had spoken to her. He had remembered her in a way he hadn't done, in a long, long time.

"Get out," he suddenly ordered, his voice carrying a deathly chill. "Our arrangement is at an end. Taylor will bring you wherever you want to go. You will never, ever contact me again. You will forget my entire existence and I, yours."

He moved to storm past her, reaching the double doors before her voice stilled him.

It was just the one word, but the answer provided a clarity he had been supressing for the longest time.

"Why?"

He spared her not a glance, looking over her head into the night sky. He spoke quietly, almost to himself, before barrelling out of the doors, into the lift, and out into the brisk air. A sense of real purpose filling him in a way that had eluded him for six long and suffering years.

"Because you're not her. You're not my Anastasia. None of you are."

…

TBC

…


	4. Chapter 4

If it were possible to physically die from shame, she would happily wait for the sweet release of death.

But four and a half hours post-phone call, she was still very much alive and kicking.

So, for the interim, she slumped back on the sofa.

Very much and regretfully, alive.

Everything ached. Physically and mentally, everything ached. The exertion of experiencing her own acidic shame was all consuming. There were varying degrees of pitiable behaviour and she had, by herself, added a new and desperately sad top tier. The Anastasia Steele, tier. Such was her whole new level of tragic. He had probably been amused by her. Tickled pink by the, by now, long forgotten girl from Montesano with the high ideals and inability to be careful what she wished for. The common girl, the failed writer, the girl who thought she was too good, too pure, too vanilla…for _Christian Grey._

The sultry, breathy voice of the unknown woman burned even deeper into her brain.

 _Sir? I'm ready to accept my punishment now. It's been twenty minutes…..._

Envy pulsated through her. That girl, with the silky voice, she was probably in the Red Room of Pain right at this very minute. Having her limits explored, her sensuality stroked. Having his hands caress her, correct her. Clutching the cheap wine bottle to her chest and staring down at it through watery eyes, Ana gave a saddened gurgle of regret. It had been six years since she'd felt the thrill, the high. The nerve-wracking, spine-tingling euphoria that flowed from the tips of his expertise laden hands. It had been six years since she'd felt the safe, secure and adored blanket that, she had discovered, only he could provide.

And now there was someone else, with that _voice,_ experiencing that nerve-wracking, spine-tingling euphoria.

And now there was someone else, with that _voice,_ experiencing that blanket.

Experiencing him. In all his fucked up, Jekyll and Hyde, glory.

Images of this woman's divine beauty infiltrated her mind. She would be tall, lithe. Have smooth skin and bright eyes. A full bust and an ample ass. Plump lips and an oval, sculpted face. She would be beautiful. Naturally so. She would move with grace. She wouldn't trip over her own feet. She would know how to please him, how to fulfil him. She would kneel at his feet without question, arch her back with a greedy acceptance of any chastisement he rained down upon her toned body. She wouldn't question him, cheek him. She would keep her eyes downcast and speak only when spoken to, using the proper terms of address at all times. She would place his needs about her own, dedicate herself to his pleasure. Bring him to the cusp of ecstasy with every stroke and strike accepted, orifice penetrated and rule upheld.

She would be everything she was not.

Which is why she was there, with him.

And why she was here, without him.

She eyed the phone stupidly, as if expecting him to call back. As if expecting him to put this beautiful woman on hold, this likeminded woman, so he could check up on the long-forgotten Anastasia Steele. A huge mouthful of two-week old matured wine found its way into her stomach. She was beginning to feel light-headed and promptly slugged some more. Perhaps if she drank enough she could convince herself that her folly was all in her drunken dreams. That she hadn't _actually_ spoken to him, felt the smooth musical caress of his words penetrate her. That she hadn't _actually_ told him she missed him, that she hadn't _actually_ made herself into the next Leila Williams, minus the suicidal and homicidal intentions.

It became very clear, very quickly, that such oblivion wasn't going to happen.

Not with one half-bottle of corner store wine. No matter how high the percent was. She closed her eyes in despair as the bottle ran dry and her thoughts remained relatively lucid. She was tipsy, sure. But nowhere near the kind of blackout drunk she needed to be. Her lips quirked bitterly up at the sides. PC, _pre-Christian,_ she had been drunk maybe once in her life. Twice at a push. Now, it was a regular occurrence, the only mechanism that allowed her to forget. A mechanism that was even more frequent when she with Chad and Rhys, than without. Her brow furrowed. The only store that sold liquor that was still open at this hour, was a twenty-minute walk away, or a five-minute ride away.

A sense of reckless abandon filled her.

A sense of dangerous, devil-may-care, abandon.

It was midnight.

Just after, actually.

Technically speaking, she had ingested her last drop of wine before the clock at struck twelve. So technically speaking, she hadn't drank since _yesterday._ A tipsy smile spread across her face as she sloped off the sofa and shrugged herself into a ratty raincoat and whatever pants she came across on the floor. Stuffing her feet into well-worn moccasins and knowing that she looked like an extra from _Les Mis_ , but not caring, she grabbed her keys and bolted from her apartment. The empty wine bottle crooked under her arm. She made a point of always bringing an empty bottle when collecting a full one.

She could convince herself she didn't have a problem that way.

No empty bottles cluttering up the apartment.

Like people with a _real_ problem.

It was raining outside. Violently so. She stopped at the sight of it, outside her dilapidated apartment building and stared. Tipping her head up, she allowed the fierce droplets to bounce and splatter off her face unchecked. It was refreshing. It was cleansing. After a few moments of allowing the cold rain to batter her worn, pale face the need for alcohol replenishment grew too strong to wait. Slipping into her battered up car, still mourning her beloved Wanda, she creakily kicked it into gear. She blinked as she crawled along the rain-sodden roads, glistening in front of her. The wine bottle sitting as a silent passenger in the seat beside her.

The roads were empty.

It was quiet, too quiet.

Quiet time meant thinking time and thinking time, meant misery time. She reached for the ancient radio, and after much fumbling and moderately drunken cussing, a jaunty country number began to fill the car. She frowned in distaste and fumbled with the knob once more, hoping for something that proclaimed the virtues of murder or some such. Something to match her mood, essentially. The wine was beginning to take a stronger hold now, intensifying the hit over time as only cheap wines could. She giggled as she fiddled with the radio, asking the silently disapproving wine bottle what he or she would like to hear.

"Rude," she muttered when the glass container merely stared straight ahead, "Fine. I'll pick."

A relatively recent rap number screamed throughout the car as she rounded a tight corner, on the final leg of her quest to sweet, beautiful alcohol-fuelled oblivion. As the song soared on, she began to drum on the aged wheel of the equally aged car. It was a song detailing the peak of human suffering and misery. She loved it. Turning up the volume so she wouldn't have to listen to her own thoughts, she twitched drunkenly to the beat.

The glass bottle seemed to condense with its silent reproach.

Such was her musical involvement, she didn't see it coming. As her car swept down the water-logged roads, she just didn't see it coming. Didn't see the way she was veering into the wrong side of the road. Didn't notice the way the car jerked and buckled with her borderline conscious movements. Didn't feel the way the pedals shuddered under her increasingly heavy foot, pushing the relic of a vehicle faster than it ever ought to be pushed. With her eyes closed in emotive screeching-singing, she physically didn't see the bright, high-powered lights that suddenly cut into the night air and directly into her line of sight.

The music was so loud, her wailing singing was so strident.

The frantic beeping made not a blip on her radar.

She had gone from tipsy to drunk, the night air and the festering quality of the cheap wine pushing her over the edge. The first she knew of the danger she had created and was barrelling into, was the deafening screech of metal on metal and the airbag that suddenly deployed smack-bang into her face, her eyes springing open just in time to see the white safety raft coming directly for her. Panic gripped her as she slammed on the breaks, her vision utterly obscured, her face stinging violently from the force of the deployed air bag. The car spun and twisted violently, the wet streets sending its collision course off the charts. The whole world was a big, white blur as she spun around and around, trying and failing to defy the laws of gravity and physics. She felt a gash cut into her cheek as the driver-side window splintered with the force of the crash, a rogue shard incising down her face before falling to the floor with a blood-covered thunk.

With one more, earth-shattering rotation spin, the car suddenly and finally stilled.

It's funny, she would come to realise, the things one focusses on in the aftermath of a trauma.

Her main concern, in that very moment, was for her passenger. The empty wine bottle. She turned her profusely bleeding face in its direction and felt a completely inexplicable relief to see it still seated, unharmed and unblemished. She realised with a jolt that she had strapped it in with the seat buckle. A shocked and drunken chuckle escaped her as she reached out a shaking hand and rubbed it over the cold glass. "It's ok," she muttered, "You're ok." As she pulled back she became aware of the burning pain that was coming from her blood-spattered cheek. She reached a shaking hand up to it, marvelling at the crimson stain that instantly coated her fingers.

Suddenly panic-stricken, she moved both her legs and her arms and felt a painful tinge of relief.

They still worked.

But they hurt.

A lot.

Her breathing became shallow, the enormity of the situation hitting her. Blinking out of her cracked windshield, the full magnitude of the scene came home to roost. It wasn't just her, in this situation. She had crashed into someone else. To some innocent person. She was on the wrong side of the road, that much was clear. Her heart contracted painfully, the typical flight-or-fight reflex surging to the fore.

She swallowed a mouthful of blood and gagged painfully.

She should call for help.

She glanced feebly down. No phone.

An empty wine bottle, but not phone. She needed to see if the other person was ok. This was her fault. She was drink-driving. She was that person you always read about. The selfish bitch who thought the laws of the land didn't apply to her, bringing innocent people into their web of despair. Somehow, she got her seat buckle undone. It took a long time and a lot of concentration and so, once again, she didn't see. She didn't see the door opening of the other vehicle. She didn't see the figure slip out from the back and take a deep breath of air, swiping a hand across their face. She didn't see the light of the cell phone pricking out from the driver's seat, a call for help underway. She didn't see anything until it was too late. She didn't hear anything until it was too late. The first she knew of anything, or anyone, was the creaking wail of her buckled door being opened and the gust of rain sodden air that caressed her dripping wound.

The man, with no injuries to speak of from the collision, approached the car slowly. Leaning down into the driver door space, he spoke before he made eye contact, with the intent of assuring this idiot driver that help was on the way. The smell of alcohol was eye-watering as he bent down and a dark anger sprung to his eyes. The need to reassure the idiot driver, turned drunken-idiot driver, was diminishing.

"Stay still," he barked as he knelt down fully, "Help will be here…."

His eyes flew open. His heart stopped. The axis' of his world tilted dangerously. There was blood coursing down the girl's cheek. A wine bottle clearly empty and obviously consumed, was strapped safely beside her. She was paler than pale. Gaunt and haunted. Everything about her screamed fragility, both physical and mental. She was staring straight ahead, like some sort of conditioned solider, ignoring the steady dripping of blood as it spurted from her cheek. The smell of alcohol intensified as the girl parted her blood-soaked lips and her wine-breath, tinged with the rusty scent of blood, hit him in the face as her sigh filled the car.

He felt his blood run cold in his veins. Ice-cold.

"Anastasia."

Like a jack-out-of-the-box, her neck snapped to the right as her jaw scaled down violently.

 _"_ _Christian."_

 _…_ _._

TBC

(Amateur Googling says that one can fly from Seattle to New York in four and a half to five hours direct and commercial. So, given Christian's private transport, I gave him five hours (we're 4.5 hours on at the start of this chapter from the phone-call) tops to get there and be en route to Ana's! Inks x)

….


	5. Chapter 5

Grey eyes appraised her quietly as she awoke.

She stared in delayed shock. He looked so real, so perfectly real. Wild images flashed through her throbbing head as she lay back on her familiar, uncomfortable bed with a groan. It had been such a realistic dream. She had even smelt him. That expensive, clean cologne. The same scent he always wore. Could you smell in a dream? She supposed so. Bringing a hand up to rest on her spinning head, she winced. Her closing eyes snapped open. A soft, expertly applied bandage rested under her clawing fingers. Her hand scrabbled down the rest of her face. Her eyes bulged. Another bandage coated her cheek.

"No, Anastasia, you're not dreaming."

Strong, familiar hands caught her as she ungracefully shrieked and spasmed, nearly falling headfirst out of her bed. He pressed her back against the pillows, a soft groan pressing at his lips from the simplest touch. He drew away when she was secure, as if afraid of being burned. Sitting back down on the chair he'd been keeping watch from for the last five hours, his expression was blank. His eyes however, were smouldering pits of spitting charcoal. Her mouth fell open as she assessed his realness. His presence. Her heart hammered so frantically it was in danger of slicing clean through the walls of her chest. Trademark jeans. Navy pullover that strained and pooled in all the right places. Tousled, auburn hair. A deeply penetrating stare.

Christian _fucking_ Grey _._

In her shitheap apartment.

In the, clearly, very early hours of the morning.

Breathing was suddenly a difficult exercise. The patches of skin his cool hands had touched began to sizzle. As if remembering an old flame and yearning for the entire fire. Her lips parted as she drew her knees to her chest, wrapping her arms around them. She glanced down at them in shock. Gone was her grubby nightdress, in its place, a dazingly white shirt. She sniffed it delicately. Her eyelids fluttered down like an addict experiencing the first buzz of a long awaited high. It was his shirt. Her thoughts jumbled like an unfurling ball of wool, she blinked and blinked again.

"Do you require some assistance in recalling how I have come to be here, Anastasia?"

Her eyes snapped up to meet his and the anger was unmistakable. Her stomach clenched, doubling over itself painfully. Hazy images came back to her. The wine, the phone call. The shame and the humiliation. The need for more liquor. The rationalisation that she'd only had a tiny bit to drink. The safe strapping of the empty wine bottle in beside her. The drifting into the wrong lane. Those bright lights. The screeching wail of metal on metal. The bursting pain. The cool wind as the door had been opened. The voice.

Her eyes popped.

 _The voice._

"I see you have arrived part of the way," he murmured silkily, "Allow me to fill in the blanks. After you hung up, I was immediately on a plane on my way here. I had a driver pick me up at the airport, naturally I know your address. We set off. Then a car, veering dangerously between lanes, steers directly for us. My driver is calm and mitigates the potential injury as best he can. He and I are unscathed. I get out to see what kind of unparalleled idiot is responsible for delaying my much-fantasised reunion with the elusive Miss Steele. Imagine my shock when I open the relic of a car door to be greeted by the stench of cheap alcohol and the bleeding, inebriated and thoroughly dazed Miss Steele in question?"

His eyes smoked over, swirling clouds of doom shrouding in from the East.

"Naturally, I'm stunned for a moment. You understand that, don't you? My being stunned for a moment? But eventually I get with the programme and I have a top-rate doctor on site within five minutes. The perks of being me. He assured me that your injuries were, mercifully and luckily, superficial. All you would require was some expert stitching and heavy-duty pain medication. Knowing your aversion to hospitals, I insisted he give you the medication then and there and patch you up here in your home. You were in shock and incoherent before the drugs got to work and then you were asleep and incoherent. And," his lips twitched dangerously, "Here we are. Five hours later."

He reached down suddenly at his side and plucked up a terrifyingly familiar wine bottle.

Putting the empty vessel down on the bedside table with a short snap, he arched a perfect brow.

"Seeing as you took such care in strapping this empty bottle in and _not_ yourself, I assumed you'd be wanting it back. Is it of some sentimental value? A value perhaps higher than your life?"

Unable to breathe, her gaze flickered from the bottle to his face. His _face._ It was slightly older looking, now. In a way that suited him so much it made her pulse skip three beats. In a way that made the perfectly perfect even more perfect. Crinkles had formed at the corners of his unusual eyes. The faint flecks of grey hair that she'd spent an embarrassing amount of time staring at online were even more dignified and appealing in real life. At thirty-three, he was young with an indefinable air of an old-age presence. She swallowed hard as his eyes bored into her face, greedily drinking it in. She still couldn't quite believe he was there, right in front of her. Close enough to touch. But she didn't, she didn't even try. If she reached out and he wasn't there but was a mere figment of her imagination, she knew she wouldn't be able to handle it.

"Anastasia," he snapped, ruining the moment in that familiar _oh-so-bossy_ tone, "Answer me."

She startled, her examination of his every pore, eyelash and crease disrupted.

"Huh?" she whispered softly, the spell broken.

The familiar hard line of his mouth carved into stone as the equally familiar exasperated breath escaped him.

"The bottle, Anastasia," he repeated through gritted teeth. "I want to know why you saw fit to drive around town, on slippery wet roads, in the middle of the night. More to the point, I want to know why you saw fit to drive around town, on slippery wet roads, in the middle of the night with a bottle of wine _inside_ and _beside_ you?"

His slender fingers pinched the bridge of his nose and she knew he was struggling to control his temper.

"What the hell were you thinking?" he said quietly, "Please, tell me. Why would you do this?"

She shivered involuntarily when she heard the undercurrent to his voice. Anyone else, they would have missed it. But she had gotten to know him so hard and so fast that his subtlest tell was her blaring siren. The self-assured, confident mega-millionaire was _scared._ Her breath hitched. A droplet of nervous moisture popped over her upper lip. She squirmed where she sat. How could he still make her feel like this? After all this time? She chewed her bottom lip anxiously and he groaned silently at the sight of it. The trigger that never failed to set him the hell off.

He didn't know if he were more palm-twitchingly or cock-twitchingly inclined in that moment.

The image of the spurting blood that trickled down her cheek forced its way back into his mind.

Palm-twitchingly. He was definitely palm-twitchingly inclined.

"I wasn't thinking," she muttered suddenly, after a pregnant pause. "I didn't drink a full bottle of wine, by the way. It was a half-bottle. And after I drank it I wanted more and I didn't have any. I thought I could drive to the store and back real quick. I didn't feel drunk in the slightest. I guess…the air must have knocked me out a bit." It felt bizarre. Talking to him about her first ever legal misdemeanour as if they were shooting the breeze at a bus stop.

 _"_ _You guess the air must have knocked you out a bit?"_

His jaw tightened.

"That's really what you're going to go with?"

She opened her mouth uncertainly, chastened, before a crackle of defiance overtook her.

"Are you some kind of lawyer now, Mr Grey? I'm not sure that profession would become you. You don't get to make the rules but you do have to play by the rules."

His head tilted dangerously to the side. He studied her. Closing his eyes, he counted slowly. There it was. That smart mouth. The quick wit and the dry sass. Those things were still the same. Physically however, she was different. She'd lost weight. Far too much weight. She was tired looking, moderately haggard. She looked older than her mere twenty-seven years. But for all her change, she was still mind numbingly beautiful. Still the most captivating woman he had ever seen. Still the twenty-one-year-old English Literature major with the non-existent coordination.

Still his only weakness.

A bout of nostalgia hit him like a freight truck and his voice dripped with memories past.

"If you were mine you wouldn't sit for a week."

Her eyes snapped to his and he could have sworn he saw a ghost of a smile as she floated back to that morning that seemed like a lifetime ago.

"A lot's changed since then."

He nodded, an uncharacteristic cloud of sadness crossing his face.

"Fair point well made, Miss Steele."

She let out a small tinkering laugh, by now so far and few between that it surprised even her.

"You really do hold onto your little phrases, don't you?"

He inclined his head and hands in a show of mock guilt, grinning that rare grin that made her ache.

"I hold onto a lot of things."

She smiled then, seemingly peaceful for just a moment before a deep frown marred her face. Drawing her knees tighter to her chest and hating the comfort she drew from his scent, misery battered her. Why was she doing this to herself? Was she some sort of delusional masochist? Did she actually enjoy the heartache? Her voice when she spoke again had a tight, clipped quality to it. His innards froze when he heard it. The last time he had heard her speak like that, she had left him. She had walked out the door and he had never been able to win her back.

"Where's your sub, Christian? Bound and gagged in your rental trunk?"

He flinched, thrown by the question.

"She is gone," he answered carefully, "She was…new. It was a clean break."

He knew the moment the words had left his lips that there were the wrong ones.

"She was new," Ana repeated softly, "I forgot how dispensable we all are. Lose one, just get another."

He shook his head, a look of consternation knitting his brow together.

"You were never one of a collective, Anastasia. You were never dispensable. You were my undoing. You came falling headfirst into my office and nothing has been the same since. A sub to me is a sub, I care for them in my own way. But you were never just a sub. You were the only girl who's ever made me want more."

His mouth quirked at the edges.

"Hearts and flowers, remember? I was willing to try. I wanted to try, for you."

His face sobered, his eyes burning with a cool, grey sincerity.

"You were never dispensable Anastasia Steele, not then and not now."

Exactly half of her yearned to believe him, to think that she was truly that special to him. The other half sneered in contempt. She was just as much a piece of ass to take and whip as any of the girls before and after her. _Just look at how he left Leila_ the snarky voice sniped. _She had other troubles, she was ok when he broke it off_ the yearning side countered. Her head was suddenly too full and she instinctually reached for it, the mental and still-present physical tumult proving too much.

He was on his feet and leaning over her in an instant.

"What is it?" he urged, "Are the meds not working? I'll get the Doctor back. I'll get him right back."

His cell was snapped out of his hand before he could hit dial.

"It's nothing," she muttered, "It's just you being here, it's a lot to…process."

He immediately stepped back, giving her breathing room.

He scrubbed a hand through his tousled hair and asked a question he prayed would be answered negatively.

"Anastasia, would you like me to leave?"

Her insides froze. The idea of his leaving was another fifty/fifty split. The snarky part of her wanted to slam the door shut behind him, scold her for opening her life up to him again in the first place. The yearning part of her wanted to chain him to the bed, make it so that she never had to be without him again. She swallowed. It shouldn't be possible for one person to have such an effect on another. It shouldn't be possible to want the one thing she knew to be dangerous, knew to be destructive. But all things were possible when it came to Christian T. Grey.

Of that much, she was certain.

"I want you to leave and I want you to stay."

He rolled his eyes.

"Still the same decisive Anastasia."

She looked at him, a faint shadow of the old sparkle in her eyes.

"It isn't polite to roll one's eyes, Mr Grey."

He smirked.

"I practice a system of do as I say and not as I do, Miss Steele."

She threw her eyes up to heaven. His smirk grew even more pronounced.

"Now who's being impolite?"

She shrugged, the expensive fabric of his shirt ruffling soothingly over her shoulders. Silence blanketed them. He sank back down into his chair. There was an elephant in the room of extra-elephantine proportions. It stood in the corner. Trumpeting as loudly as could be. Pawing the ground angrily. Demanding attention. He knew it was there. She knew it was there. Neither knew what to do with it. How to approach it. Awkwardness pressed in, hard. He had so much he wanted to say. Things she had never allowed him to put out there. She didn't know what she wanted to say. She had thought and thought about their reconciliation. How it would be. Her crashing into his car after downing cheap wine and waking up in his shirt-"

"Wait. Who put this shirt on me?"

He looked up, surprised.

"I did. Your err…nightdress was rather soiled."

"You undressed me?"

The sharp tone of her voice threw him.

"Anastasia. Really? It's nothing I haven't seen before. I wasn't going to leave you in dirty clothes."

She couldn't really argue with those points so she just pursed her lips up good and tight.

"What are we doing here, Christian? Why did you come here?"

There. There is was. The elephant in the room. She was too tired to pretend it wasn't there. She was too vulnerable to play along with the fantasy only to have it yanked out from under her feet at the last minute. She needed to know. She needed to know how she could, albeit drunkenly, call him whilst he was doing god knows what with god knows who and him be in her apartment mere hours later.

"You called. I came."

His black and white view of things. Still out in force.

"I called six years later with a stomach full of Dutch courage, and you came? That's all it took?"

Something shifted in those grey eyes as he nodded soberly.

"That's all it will ever take, Anastasia. I told you. You were my undoing. I don't know what you did to me. I just know that things haven't been the same since you…since things ended the way they did. I just know that nothing tastes the same, smells the same. The highs are lows and the lows are even lower. You turned my world upside fucking down, Miss Steele. That's why I ran after you like a lost dog in the streets. That's why I bombarded you with calls and letters. That's why I thought of you every day since that night."

He shrugged.

"That's what I'm doing here. Plain and simple."

She stared, her heart in her mouth. Beads of perspiration popping at her temples.

"But I couldn't cut it as your sub?" she whispered, "That's all you care about."

He shook his head, frustration mounting like a rising tide within him.

"Haven't you been listening to a single thing I've said? Anastasia. Things changed when I met you. Can I sit here and pretend that my urges and needs are somehow different now? No. I can't. I look at you sitting there, naked under that shirt and my mind fills with images of you in my playroom. Your freshly fucked ass raised nice and high for my pleasure, your pleasure. I think about gagging you, blindfolding you and bringing you to places you don't even know exist. I get a hard-on dreaming of you stripped naked, kneeling at my feet, the only words coming out of your being _yes sir_ or _no sir."_ He took a deep breath. "But I also think about taking you out on my boat, just the two of us. Sightseeing with a picnic. I think about travelling with you, experiencing the furthest corners of the world with you. I think about hearing my mother rave of you."

He dropped his gaze down to the floor, the conflicts within him all-consuming.

"I look at you and I see shades of light and dark."

His voice dropped an octave, saturated in confused longing. An almost boyish bewilderment.

"I just don't know how the two can blend together. No matter how hard I try to see it, I can't."

Her breath stilled in her chest.

Longing was fuelling her. She looked at him in all his fucked-up glory and sheer yearning consumed her. If she were his undoing, he was her obliteration. Did she want to be his sub? No. Could she pretend that she had hated every minute of dominant Christian? Also no. There were aspects of his controlling, powerful nature that had turned her on in ways she knew she would never find again. There were some facets of his domineering personality that made her feel safe, adored. There were some splinters of his needs that she was happy to fulfil. She wasn't averse to all manner of pain. Some pain, she had learned, was pleasurable beyond belief. But he was right. Light and dark. That was the void between them. She couldn't be wholly what he needed and wanted and he couldn't be totally and uncompromisingly what she required and coveted.

Light and dark.

North and South.

The summation of their fucked-up relationship. From conception, to intermission, to…whatever the hell this chapter was.

"Christian, I-"

She was cut off by his phone shrilling in her hand, having confiscated it from him in earlier to prevent the return of some unknown Doctor. Grey and blue eyes were drawn to the flashing screen, the caller ID proclaiming far and wide who was interrupting their moment. The message preview shone up at them, the entire message captured in the neon blurb.

Ana's heart fell as she handed the phone out to him, his eyes wide.

 ** _Christian_** _. Diana told me what happened. How many times are you going to put your life on hold for that silly little girl? She is no good for you. We agreed, remember? You remember how you agreed she was a mistake, the worse you've ever made? You need to remember that, Christian. Come home and Diana will be waiting. Don't forget who you are. Remember what you said: she was a distraction, nothing more. I am waiting to hear from you._

 ** _Elena._**

Ana's voice was as glacial as the message itself, successfully hiding the molten hurt gurgling in her windpipe.

"It's Mrs Robinson for you."

…

TBC

….


	6. Chapter 6

"Fuck," he whispered. "Anastasia, no. Listen to me. It was a long time ago. I-"

"When you considered me the biggest mistake of your life, confirming that viewpoint with the woman who sexually abused and molested you as a child?"

"She didn't-"

"Yes, she did. That's why you're so screwed up now. That's why…" she trailed off, but her unspoken words were a bellow in the room. _That's why we've been apart for the last six years._ He blinked, trying to regain control of the situation.

"Anastasia. When you left, I was in a bad place. I-"

"Turned to Mrs Robinson for comfort? Of course you did. Christ that's sick."

"Her name is Elena," he snapped. "This Mrs Robinson nonsense is old, it's tired. She turned my life around, whether you find her means palatable or not. Anastasia, if it were not for that woman I wouldn't be who I am. I wouldn't be even half the man I am today."

Ana stared, overwhelming emotions conflicting within her and shook her head.

"That's why I hate her so much. Because of the man she made you today."

He flinched, an unusual tell for him, and leaned back. The phone she had thrust had him weighed heavy in his hands. His brow knitted together and a darkness pooled into his eyes. For a moment, he looked quite menacing and she withdrew even further. Tightened her knees up in front of her protectively. He saw the nervous distancing and immediately corrected himself, hating the fact she thought him a threat. He breathed deeply, slowly.

"Tell me what you mean by that," he commanded, "Explain that to me. Now."

She tossed him a look of disdain. The whirlwind that had stormed since that phone call engulfing her.

"You don't give me orders any more, Christian. We're just two people. No more power imbalance."

He smiled then, tightly and wryly, and shook his head.

"Oh, Miss Steele," he countered softly, "It was always you that held the power. I was the one suffering the imbalance. You fell headfirst into my office and you exerted a pull over me that I've never before felt in my life, or ever again experienced since you left. You have no idea the sort of puppeteer you were. You could pull strings that I didn't even know I had, without even knowing you were pulling them. There's always been a power balance, but it's always fallen in your court."

Her mouth fell open slightly, that dazzled doe look that drove him crazy with need.

"Are you insane? Do you have any idea the effect you have on people?"

She tilted her head, glaring at him as though he were being deliberately dense.

"The Grey effect?"

He blinked at her before throwing back his head and laughing the laugh that had once shocked and delighted her. now, it just made him seen maniacal. She withdrew further, wondering whether he was the same Christian after all.

"The Grey effect," he chuckled, "Sounds like a disease."

She couldn't help the tiny smile that pulled at her lips then as she nodded.

"You'd have to work hard to find patient zero. Seeing as you've either flogged or fucked half of Seattle."

He sobered immediately.

"You know that's not true. I'm a lot of things, granted, but a whore isn't one of them. Besides, if I'm truly an infection, you're the only I ever really infected. Sure, women want me. I'm a multi-millionaire, young and disgustingly handsome. Attraction is a natural consequence of that. But-"

"I see you're as humble as ever," she interrupted contemptuously, "My congratulations."

"But," he continued smoothly, "You _are_ patient zero. They wanted me for the lifestyle I could offer, our shared inclinations. You wanted me for something more. That terrified and amazed me, and I handled it…poorly. That poor judgment remains one of my biggest regrets."

She twisted her head to stare at him.

"Poor judgment?"

He swallowed.

"The belt. When you asked me to show you how bad it could get, you were in no fit state of mind to understand what you were asking for. I knew that. Anastasia, I knew it. But they you were, demanding that I do what I'd been yearning to do since the moment I'd met you. The previously untenable. I gave into my needs and put yours second. I should _never_ have done that. You were nowhere near ready. We were nowhere near ready. I got greedy. I acted like a fucking newbie. Like I didn't know you didn't understand what you were asking of me. I told myself you were a strong, clever girl and that if you wanted it, who was I to disagree. That's the poor judgement I'm talking about."

His jaw clenched.

"The poor judgement that cost me more than I ever thought one decision could."

Her eyes popped as he addressed the fateful night that had kept both of them from the comfort of the other for the last half-decade and more.

"I asked you to do it," she whispered, "I demanded it. It was my fault. I've thought and thought about it and I know I pushed you to do it. I should have known that I couldn't handle it. That I was we-"

"Don't you dare," he interrupted sternly, "Don't you dare tell me you were weak."

He slipped into full on Mr Grey mode as quickly as he was to fall back out of it.

"I was the weak one. Not you. I don't want to hear anything else coming out of your mouth. I mean it."

A soft sigh tried to escape her as the tingling she hadn't experienced in a lifetime buzzed within her at his authoritative tone. His stern face. All offset by the caring he couldn't hide in his eyes. There was supreme, uninterrupted silence for a moment as he stared at her and she at him. As she watched, Mr Grey melted away and the unusually unsure Christian Grey took his place.

"Fine, I won't say I was weak," she conceded, "But if I hadn't have asked, we wouldn't have-"

"Yes we would," he interrupted quietly, "I would have fucked things up some other way."

"And yet you're here. If you think you'd have fucked it up anyway, why come?"

He frowned.

"I told you already. You called. I will always come if you call. That's the power imbalance I was talking about. I can't help myself. I couldn't help myself when I told you to stay away from me on that street corner all those years ago, and I can't help myself now. You're like a godamned drug, Anastasia. An innocent drug that doesn't have a clue about its deadly effects. I wouldn't cross the road for most of the people in my life, save my family, but I would cross oceans for you."

She stared, mouth agape, before spluttering into a squeal of laughter.

"You would cross oceans for me?" she giggled, "Did you read that in Woman's Weekly?"

He shook his head exasperatedly, a fond smile playing about his lips.

"Still such a cheeky madam," he murmured dryly, "I used to have such a good cure for that."

"Did you confirm that cure before or after you decided I was a mistake, the biggest of your life?"

He was thrown by the sudden change in conversation. The swinging from relaxed teasing to tense interrogations between them was beginning to jade him. Clearly, she was a little bit surprised by her own mercurial turn, but her eyes demanded an answer nonetheless.

"I told myself, and Elena, what we both needed to hear."

She glared.

"She needed to hear that I was the biggest blunder of your life?"

A sudden streak of hurt anger boiled in him.

"Well in my defence, she was the only one there to hear fucking anything, seeing as you ran out on me and never came back."

She opened her mouth to angrily retort, only to have the wind swiftly taken out of her sails.

"Fair point well made, Mr Grey."

He smiled tiredly.

"Déjà vu, Miss Steele."

A nearly companionable silence filled the space between them, each lost to their own thoughts for a brief moment. Confusion swirled in her as unease battered him. He was not a man accustomed to explaining himself, admitting to suffering the human condition of emotion. He still couldn't grasp her nearness, her realness. For her part, she still couldn't get her head around the fact that he was really there, that it was his shirt rubbing against her naked body. That he thought she was the powerful one, that he considered her the puppeteer and he the puppet.

"So what is this?" she asked quietly, "A flying visit, see you in another six years?"

His eyes snapped to hers and the answer was written in them before he spoke it.

"The hell it is."

The smell of him around her clothed shoulders seemed to intensify as she stared.

"Then what is it?"

He gazed at her hungrily, and she saw it immediately.

The fifty/fifty split of Christian Grey and Mr Grey. The Jekyll and Hyde division. Staring her in the face.

"This is me trying to right a wrong that should have been righted six years ago."

He looked at her through the thick, black eyelashes that made her breath hitch.

"This is me, telling you, that I want you. In whatever way I can have you."

She could hear her heart hammering wildly as she peeled her sticky lips apart.

What she wanted to believe, wanted to say, isn't what came out of her mouth.

"I think we both know that you can't do that."

"Anastasia, I-"

Raw, putrid misery filled her as her very-barely-there sense of self-preservation forced her to say the words.

"You should leave. This was a mistake. I'm sorry, I made a mistake. I should never, ever have called you. We're the most incompatible people in the universe. You're you and I'm me and those two people don't have any business talking to each other like this. You need to go."

His eyes widened.

"Listen to me-"

She shook her head, her voice dripping with the tears that she wouldn't shed. Not in front of him. She tried for a bout of farewell levity, but all she managed to provide in a choked, muffled voice was a painful reminder of what had been and what no longer was.

"Laters, baby."

…

TBC

…


	7. Chapter 7

"No."

She looked up at him from their stalemate silence. Her stomach did the thing. The Christian thing. She tried to ignore it, tried to hold onto her tenuous resolve. But that was hard to do when his commanding presence filled the room. Hard when he was so tantalisingly near. His voice rang around the room. Soft and thunderous at the same time. The easy authority that dripped from his simple _no_ sent her heart into a fluttering rhythm.

"What do you mean, no?"

He tipped his head to the side to study her closer, his eyes smouldering with his essence.

"No is the commonly accepted opposite of yes. So, I suppose mean the opposite of yes."

She glowered at him. Sparks that he hadn't seen in a long, long time crackling from her. Her tone was icy when she spoke. But there was a pulled punch behind her words. She was conflicted. He could tell. She wanted him to go because she was scared that if he didn't, he'd hurt her. Not physically, no, something much worse. He thought he had known all there was to know about mental anguish and pain. The Crack Whore still visited his dreams. He knew about psychological scarring. But when she had left, he had been transported to a brand spanking new level of hell. And if he knew anything, he knew by looking at her shadow, she'd been there to.

"I don't need a vocabulary lesson right now, Christian. What I do need is for you to leave. Immediately."

He inclined his head, acknowledging her unspoken words.

"How about a compromise? You used to love those. How about you agree to listen to me for as long as it takes for me to tell you a few things. It won't take long. If you don't like what I have to say, you can kick me out. I'll go without a fuss. But if you want to hear more, you let me stay here. We talk. We figure a few things out. How does that sound?"

Her bottom lip was sucked under her teeth once more as she nibbled upon it contemplatively.

He closed his eyes.

Christ, she was making things difficult.

"Why are you doing this?" she whispered, "Why are you making it so hard to let you go?"

Her pain shot through him like a bullet. He resisted the urge to go to her. To hold her as best as someone like he could. He knew touching wouldn't be welcomed. He was too close as it was. He was crowding her, suffocating her. He inched backwards and let out a soft groan.

"Because I cannot let you go, Anastasia. I've tried. And I just can't. Because I simply don't want to."

Blue eyes swivelled to his.

"You don't?"

He shook his head slowly, drinking in her every feature like a squirrel facing a long winter.

"I don't."

She buried her face in her blankets so forcibly and suddenly, he was alarmed.

"Why couldn't I fall in love with a nice, simple guy that likes football and building shit?" she asked of her duvet, her voice muffled. "Why did I have to fall into your fucking office? I could've been married to Brad the all-American dream by now. But oh _no,_ I have to fall for a perverted, kinky and twisted motherfucking millionaire who also happens to have a soft spot for third-world philanthropic duties. Who now refuses to leave my apartment where he apparated to after six years of no contact, because I drunk-dialled him on a shitty Wednesday night. Why can't my life ever be simple? Why?"

He stared bewilderedly and silently at her blanket-buried head. Blinking almost innocently, he cleared his throat with a very uncharacteristic unease.

"Are those rhetorical questions? It's just…I don't want to be rude and ignore you if there aren't."

She snapped her head up from the blanket, her hair sticking up dangerously.

"You are the worst and best thing that ever happened to me, do you know that?"

He flinched at the worst and smiled a rare smile at the best, before nodding his head fractionally.

She glared at his silence, supressing the sudden urge to scream and throw things at his beautiful, perfect face.

"Let me guess, ditto?"

He shook his head this time, the small smile slipping away from his lips and an emptiness filling his eyes.

"No," he said softly, "Only half right."

She closed her open mouth then, rendered mute. The silent stalemate re-entered the room and the two lapsed into it, thoughts spinning around in their brains with an almost with a physical discomfort. It was he who broke it, his voice quiet. She'd always loved it when he spoke quietly. It reminded her of the peace that coated him when he played the piano. He was at ease then. It was rare and it was beautiful.

"Do you agree to my compromise?"

She considered him, knowing that the smart answer was _no_ and _get the hell out._

"Yes."

Okay, so she wasn't smart. Ignorance was bliss. C'est la vie, etc etc.

He grinned then, like the cat that got the cream. Only this cat was in danger of poisoning himself with cream that wasn't designed for him. Cream that would make him hurt. But cream that tasted so good and filled him with such deliciousness that he kept coming back for more and more, no matter the consequences of their incompatibility.

"I will be categorically upfront with you, Anastasia. Since we've been apart, I've tried again and again to replace you with new subs. There's been four since you left. The new girl, Diana, last night was her first and last night with me. She would have been number five." He spoke hurriedly as her expression darkened. "I was trying to heal some of the…hurt, is that the right word? I've never been hurt before. Not like that. And so, after it became clear that you were never coming back to me, I went back to the world I knew. The world you'd shaken, made what was black and white fill with shades of grey. I needed a release, Anastasia, I was going crazy. And the lifestyle is the only release I've ever known."

She burned as he spoke. Quivered with envy that she had no right to feel.

"But they were paltry replacements for what I'd lost. They didn't measure up to you in any way or form. I derived only physical pleasure from them. They were there to serve me and to relieve me. That was the extent of our relationships. I treated them well, of course, but they were just toys to me. I grew bored of my toys Anastasia. Because I'd tasted a glimmer of the real thing and after that, artifice was never going to be enough. But I knew you loathed me, as you had every right, so what could I do? I knew I would never feel for another how I felt for you. All I had were subs. I was angry, frustrated. I needed to vent that anger, that frustration." He shrugged, looking down at the carpet as an inexplicable shame washed over him. "They were willing and eager. It was an arrangement of mutual benefit. I took and they gave, I don't deny that."

Still radiating with an almost viscous jealousy, she pulled her lips apart and spoke glacially.

"Christian. We were no longer a…involved. What you did after I left is your own business. I don't need to hear any of this. I don't _want_ to hear any of this. I really think that you should go and-"

"So, I threw myself into work more than ever to try and forget about you," he interrupted quietly, "But even work had lost its colour. I didn't get the thrill from it anymore. I was building my empire and for what? To what end? I already have more money than I know what to do with. I do not need to work. I worked for the love of it, and now, that's gone too. So now I just work for something to do, somewhere to go. Because what else is there? An empty penthouse apartment and a fleet of flash cars? So, I went to work and went through the motions. I'd stare out of my office window and try to visualise you in the crowd below. You were never there, I knew that. But I liked to pretend nonetheless."

He pinched the bridge of his nose, unease at his unusual openness lashing against him.

But he carried on. Because this was his last and final shot.

"I'm telling you all this not because I want your pity or your scorn. I'm telling you this because it's the answer to your question. All your questions. You asked me why I came? That's why. You asked me why I won't leave? That's why. You asked me why it's so hard to let me go? That's why. Because for whatever reason, you, Anastasia Steele are my fucking undoing. I can't be who I was without you. I was a different version, a better version of myself with you. I want that back. I need that back. I need you to…humanise me. I'm not saying I'm ever going to be a poet, spouting bullshit at the side of a flowered river. But I am saying that I'm willing to try. I told you once before, that I was willing to _try,_ Anastasia."

He swallowed, an almost alien feeling of terror and insecurity burning inside him.

"I'm asking you for a second chance. A second chance at trying."

If she allowed her jaw to drop open any further, an articulated lorry could've sailed through it. She stared at his scrutinising gaze, searching in his eyes for motivation behind his words. Her heart seemed to pump air instead of blood, so fast was its pace. She'd fantasised about this moment a hundred times over and then some. There she was, looking like hell, draped in his shirt. Her hair hung lankly around her face, her apartment looked like something a serial killer would use as a go-between and _Christian Grey_ was asking _her_ for another chance.

Her eyes fluttered closed, a moment of darkness to collect her thoughts.

"You want to try again?" she murmured, "Is that what you're saying?"

He spoke without hesitation in that clear, commanding voice that she couldn't figure out if she loved or loathed.

"Yes."

Her head dropped down to the blankets with closed eyes, feeling his gaze scorch the side of her face.

"As your sub. You want me back as your sub?"

The air suddenly seemed to lessen in the room as he sucked it in through even teeth.

"No, Anastasia. Not as my sub. As something…more. The something more I want the second chance at."

This was a trick. This had to be a trick. Like one of those shows were people find a shit tonne of money only to find out its all counterfeit. Fake. Useless. She shook her head, her slender shoulders tensing defensively.

"You're telling me that you don't ever want to control or punish me again? Ever again?"

He let out a slow, sweet breath. Those words out of her mouth made everything quiver inside him.

"No," he said quietly, "I won't bullshit you. I want to control and punish you very much. This shit tonight with the drunk driving? I want to punish you. Same as I want to reward and pleasure you. I told you, Anastasia, my needs are my needs. I've always had them. I would be a lying bastard if I were to tell you otherwise. You are the ideal woman. Your body, your mind. The two of them together does things to me that I can't even describe. But I am willing to swallow those needs, supress them. I told you, I want you in whatever way I can have you. And if that means I turn vanilla, then I turn vanilla."

He smiled softly at her as her shocked gaze turned to him, adding a small shrug.

"What? People who've eaten meat all their lives turn vegan if they love all things cute and fluffy enough."

Her lips peeled apart, her pulse jumping in her neck.

"You think I'm _cute_ and _fluffy?"_

He smirked. His cocky, arrogant smirk that had penetrated her dreams night after night.

"I think you're the cutest and the fluffiest."

She shook her head disbelievingly, an impossible to hide smile pulling at her lips.

"You're one patronising, arrogant son-of-a-bitch, Mr Grey.

He waved a gracious hand, grinning unchecked.

"Fair point-"

"Well made,-"

"Miss Steele,-"

"Mr Grey."

He shrugged at the interruptions, his eyes sparkling.

"Still so eager," he teased, forcing her heart to beat enough for three people, "I like that."

The reality and enormity of the situation hit home then and there. Her eagerness. Her lusting for him, her thinking of him. All dangerous things. All likely to cause pain. All kinds of pain. Pain she couldn't come back from. Not again. Not that she'd come back the first time, not really. The familiar desire to reach out to Ray and seek his taciturn wisdom washed over her. The familiar knot formed in her throat that always constricted when she thought of her deceased stepfather. What would he say? He had liked Christian, had really taken to him. Had did his best to console her in his own way when their relationship crumbled. She closed her eyes. Her life had been a shit storm of loss and pain for the last six years and no matter what way she cut it, he was the catalyst.

But he was also the cure.

The snippy side of her pursed her lips in disapproval. _Wait till he gets tired of your normal needs and wants. He is who he is. You can't change him. He doesn't want to change. But he'll change you. And not for the better._

The yearning side of her waved banners and shrilled whistles. _This is what you've been waiting for, dreaming for. He's there, he's right there. He wants you. He actually wants you. The way you are. No Red Room of Pain. Just…him._

Her head began to spin with the avalanche of happenings that had sprung from one simple phone call.

"I need some time," she blurted out suddenly, unconsciously even. "I need to think."

He chewed over this for a moment.

"That's understandable."

She stared.

"I need some time and I need to think. I can't do either of those things with you here."

He chewed over that for a moment.

"That's also understandable."

She stared.

He stared.

A cloud of yearning condensed between them.

He blinked.

She blinked.

It was gone.

Swallowing, he nodded and rose. Under her bed, among the various layers of detritus, a laptop was poking out. Not the one he'd forced upon her all those years ago. But a decent enough one nonetheless. He pointed to it. Took a breath and fished his cell back out of his pocket. Handing it out to her, he raised a brow.

"Can I have your e-mail address?"

She glanced at the phone and then up at his face, raising a brow.

"Like you won't just step out of here and make a call and get it?"

He shrugged unrepentantly.

"It's probably politer to ask."

Taking the phone and murmuring wryly, she bit her lip as his hand brushed against hers.

"Yeah, because you've always been one to ask permission rather than forgiveness."

He took the phone back from her, information loaded, and quirked a brow.

"Fair point-"

"Oh, shut up Christian!"

He let out a dry chuckle and winked. Looking at her there, in nothing but his shirt, burning desire trundled through him. He bit it back down with as much pain as would erupt in his throat from chugging back boiling water. He pointed back to the laptop.

"Check that. Soon. I will be staying nearby for the foreseeable future."

She bowed her head in a mocking show of subservience.

"Yes, Master."

A glint shone up in his eyes, giving the impression of a flickering camp fire under a grey sky.

"Oh, Miss Steele. It's not nice to tease."

He reached forward and tucked her gently under the chin, savouring the feel of her soft skin.

"Laters, baby. It only works when I say it."

She watched with muted and belated astonishment as he turned and swept from the apartment without another word or backwards glance. The soft snap of her front door closing shut seemed to ring with a finality. She gazed unseeingly from her bed, her world once again upside down at the behest of Christian T Grey. Thirty-seven minutes passed before her cell gave a short rattle on her bedside table. Not sure how it had gotten there, unappreciative of its interruption to her pensiveness, she reached for it. Sliding the unlock screen open, her mail box shone up at her.

Her eyes grew wide.

* * *

 **From:** Christian Grey.

 **Subject:** Second Chances

 **Date:** May 23rd 2017 - 05:07

 **To:** Anastasia Steele

Miss Steele,

I do hope you'll consider my proposal favourably.

Take your pain medication (please) It's on the kitchen counter. Thirty minutes after food. (Doctor's orders, not mine)

Speak soon, I hope.

 **Christian Grey**

 **CEO, Grey Enterprises Holdings, Inc**

 **Patronising, arrogant son-of-a-bitch.**

* * *

….

TBC

…


	8. Chapter 8

Her name flashed up at him from his cell for the fifth time in the past hour. Laying on his hotel bed, his mind full of Anastasia, he picked it up with reluctance. She wouldn't give up. She would keep ringing and ringing, and he knew from experience, it was best to just bite the damned bullet.

"Elena, how are-"

"Christian, what the hell is the meaning of this? Do you think I found Diana on the side of the road? That girl had plenty of offers, plenty of opportunities. She's rare. And she comes to me in a state in the middle of the night, telling me you've thrown her out? Muttering about _Anastasia?_ What in the good hell do you think you're doing?"

He sighed.

"Elena, please. This is really nothing to do-"

"Don't you dare tell me that this is nothing to do with me. I am the reason you're not earning your stripes in a federal prison boy. Everything that has something to do with you, has something to do with me. That's just how it is."

He closed his eyes slowly, a snarl playing about his lips. He hated when she called him boy. Loathed it. It was her way of cutting him back down to size. Reminding him who he was on the inside. Tainting his glimmering future with his sordid past.

"Diana is a big girl," he countered quietly. "She knows the dispensability of the game. She'll be fine. There really is no need for any histrionics. With that in mind, I'd prefer to call you back tomorrow. The time difference is beginning to catch up on me and I need to sleep. You will hear from me in the morning. Until then, I-"

"What has that stupid little girl got that's so special, Christian? At least tell me that. Clue me the hell in. Because from where I'm standing, she's a naïve girl scout. What could she possibly offer you that Diana or any of the other girls I've sent you can't?"

He smiled then, to himself. Unseen. Relishing in the privacy of it.

"More."

Silence crackled on the line.

"More," Elena echoed, a cutting edge of mockery coating her voice. "More, what? Expenditure reports? That little tramp only wants you for your money. What else could a girl like her see in a man like you? She's all sunshine and rainbows and I think we both know that's not you. You need to get your head out of your ass boy and see which side your bread is buttered on. She can't offer you a damned thing. Diana, on the other hand, is an experienced, worldly girl. She'd be more than a good fit for you."

Anger blossomed like a flowering orchard in Christian's stomach. His eyes flashed dangerously.

"You will never speak of her to me like that again," he said quietly. "Anastasia is, I hope, going to be an important part of my life. Perhaps the most important part. You will learn to treat that status with the proper deference Elena, or you and I are going to run into significant…difficulties." His voice was smooth and low, how it always was when he was enraged beyond measure. Mrs Robinson heard the transition and her ghastly brows shot up in shock.

"Since when is it you that commands me, Christian?"

Her voice was just as smooth, just as low. It spelled danger. His fifteen-year old self had learned to tremble and stutter when she spoke in that tone. Like a dragon just at steaming point, ready to blast apart the prey that shuddered in front of it. He had learned the hard way about her sense of authority. Her never-to-be-challenged, sense of authority. Even now, with all his maturity and success, she still wielded a measure of power of him. He didn't like to admit it to himself, but he knew he was still shackled to her in some ways. To some extent. He had never been able to reconcile Anastasia's horrified proclamations that he had been sexually abused with the relationship he and Elena had shared. But she had gotten him thinking. With her questions. They still rang in his ears. _Look at it this way, Christian. Would you, now, have the same relationship with a fifteen-year-old girl and call it pure?"_

He paled every time he asked himself that question.

The thoughts of doing the things he did with Elena, to a child, repulsed him.

And still, he couldn't put himself in that hypothetical child's position and see the truth.

He just wasn't there yet.

"I don't command you," he admitted through gritted teeth, "But, I-"

"But you, what?" she seethed. "But you're all grown up now and can make your own decisions? Sure, that's true Christian. You're a grown man with a fortune behind your back. But in some ways, you're still that scared little boy that makes all the wrong choices. She is no good for you. And you're no good for her. The reason you are the man you are today is because I taught you to channel your impulses into something productive, something sustaining. You go ahead and put yourself on a limb for that girl again and she's going to rip you apart. You're going to go back to that dark place, Christian. The one I pulled you out of by your fucking bootstraps. Is that what you want? She's not sub material, never has been and never will be. So why are you trying to push an issue that can't be pushed with her?"

He clenched his eyes tightly shut, grabbing a fistful of his auburn hair.

"Elena, I don't want Anastasia back as my sub. I want her back as my…girlfriend, for all intents and purposes."

A silence so intense it was almost loud answered him.

His heart was hammering.

After all this time, her approval still meant something to him.

"Have you lost your mind?"

Her voice was silky now, condescending as all hell. He felt his heart sink at the familiar patronising tone. She had beat him senseless to the backdrop of that tone. Asking him questions he couldn't answer with a ball gag cutting into his mouth. Laughing at his attempts to blink back the tears. Scoffing at the inability of the fifteen-year-old Christian to hold still. The moment that tone came out of her mouth it brought it him back there. He swallowed, trying to remain in the present.

"Not that I know of, no."

She laughed, a tinkling sound of pure scorn intermixed with furious disbelief.

"I'm only going to say this once, Christian. So do pay attention. You cannot have a girlfriend. Of any description, but least of all that silly little bitch. A _girlfriend._ Do you hear yourself, boy? You are Christian T Grey. You are not some simpleton from a street corner dreaming of love. You have demons in you. I taught you how to control them. You go putting your head in the clouds, thinking about _girlfriends,_ and you're going to let them out. Is that you want? Really, is that what you want?"

A fear gripped him then.

He knew what demons she spoke of. Knew she was referring to them in their purest, most putrid form.

"That won't happen," he argued quietly, "She wouldn't-"

"Don't be an imbecile, Christian," she snapped. "That girl left you before, didn't she? She left you and she never came back. I had to watch whilst you moped around like a kicked dog, waiting for her to call. She never did. You know why? Because you repulsed her. I could see it in her the moment I laid eyes on her. She found you perverted and sick. Something to be cured. A pet project. She didn't see you as I do, Christian. She doesn't see the real you. She didn't then and she won't now. Surely you must see that?"

He couldn't think straight. Couldn't see straight.

"Elena, please-"

"There is no more to discuss. I will not stand by and watch you blow up your life yet again for that insufferable little fool. I picked up the pieces once, Christian. I will not do so again. So, I suppose we have ourselves a crossroads. There isn't room in your life for both she and I. There is only room enough for one of us. Who that is, depends on you. But I will not play second fiddle to that inane wench. I will not wait for her to break you yet again. So you must choose, Christian. You must make a decision and that decision must be final."

She breathed sharply into the phone. He could hear the air whistling between her teeth as he paled a deathly white.

"Me or Anastasia, Christian. Right now. Who's it to be?"

….

TBC

…


	9. Chapter 9

**_Me or Anastasia, Christian. Right now. Who's it to be?_**

Her words burned into his brain. The same way her nails had sunk into his skin all those years ago. Her voice brimmed with the anger he knew to be dangerous. The rage that had preceded many a savage beating. An ultimatum. Completely her style. He saw the choice. The choice between his past and present and his present and future. His brow furrowed. A knot in his stomach twanged. Had he ever pondered a life without Elena? No. Had he ever thought of a life without Anastasia? Yes. When she'd left him. And those thoughts had caused him more pain that any of Elena's psychological and physiological punishments ever had.

"You're issuing me with an ultimatum, Elena? Really?"

Her breath was icy on the other end of the line.

"I shouldn't think it can be classed as an ultimatum, Christian. Your choice is clear. Now, stop this foolishness and tell that little tramp that there was a choice. That you chose me over her. That'll be enough to send her running for the hills. Again. Your choice is-"

"Anastasia."

A profound silence.

"I beg your pardon?"

He closed his eyes. Pinched the bridge of his nose. Images of a blurred quality whirred through his brain. The first time she had undressed him, by explicit orders only. Never touching him. The first time she had truly dominated him. The release of his first submission. The sneaking subterfuge carried on behind his parents back. The growth from troubled adolescent to young, sought-after magnate. The progression from sub to Dom. All of these milestones had her in the background. Whispering in his ear. She had moulded him. Saved him from himself. And now she was asking him to choose.

"You heard me, Elena. I cannot be without Anastasia. But I can learn to be without you."

He didn't need to see her to know the dangerous line her mouth was twisting into.

"Why, you insolent little bastard. For fuck sake Christian, are you unwell? Are you mentally unwell? Is that what this is, you've lost your fucking mind? I am the woman who made you who you are. You are _nothing_ without me. Just another statistic. I am the backbone to your success. The reason you aren't in some shithole of a prison. And you tell me that she is more important to you than I? That you choose her over me? How _dare_ you?"

His innards froze at her tone, her words, the truth.

"Elena, I don't want to choose. You're the one insisting I do. Anastasia is like a drug to me. I feel things for her. Things I never, ever thought I could feel. For anybody. You've heard my mother. She worries about me. Frets about my inability to connect. Compares me to the easy-to-love Elliot, the warm Mia. I was always the cold one. The distant one. But with Anastasia, I don't feel that emptiness anymore. I can't give that up, Elena. Not for anything, or anyone. Not even for you. If you force me to choose, that is my choice."

She seethed down the line, the static crackling with her burning rage.

"Christian. I will not accept this."

He closed his eyes slowly.

"Then do not force a choice where there needn't be one."

"You think she will not force a choice? You know what she thinks of me. What she thinks of us."

Christian hesitated, but only for a moment.

"Anastasia understands that she sees things differently about our relationship than I do."

"Differently?" Elena sneered, "She thinks I abused you. She thinks that I molested you. That silly little bitch thinks you're perverse and twisted because I made you so. Because I traumatised you. Not because you were born to be Dominant. Not because you're strong. But because I didn't wait an extra three years to teach you, to train you. Because I didn't stand by and watch you self-destruct whilst that simpering imbecile was still in grade school. She will only be back in your life a wet second before she starts whispering her poison into your ear. She's a jealous little bitch and she will stop at nothing to turn you against me."

His teeth bared in a snarl that contorted his classically handsome face into an ugly mask of anger.

"You will not speak about her in such a manner. You will not address her with such disrespect."

"I will speak about her as I please. You however, will watch your tone my boy."

That was the trigger.

That simple word, designed to regress and belittle.

It was the final tug of the elastic band, straining under a lifetime of pressure.

Neither knew the floodgates she was opening with that simple disparaging address.

"I am not your _boy,"_ Christian spat. "I am a grown fucking man, Elena. I am one of America's most successful fucking men at that. I do not require your permission to see Anastasia, and I don't need your childish ultimatums. And the more I think about it, the more I think that she has the right idea and I the wrong. Anastasia see's you for what you really are and that's why you hate her, isn't it? She threatens you? She threatens to pull the wool that you placed over my eyes all those years ago clean off. See, sometimes I lay awake at night and think about how you seduced me at aged fifteen. Then I put myself in your position and picture me doing the same to a fifteen-year-old girl. And you know what happens, Elena?"

He snarled down the phone, years of pent up uncertainty and pain billowing out.

"I get a little sick in my mouth. I retch at the thoughts of it. The mere thoughts of it. To do the things you did to and with me to a fifteen-year-old child makes my skin crawl. But then I think about how you made me feel, how you told me all about the man you were going to turn me into. I think about all the things you taught me and I think, it must've been different for her. She surely thought she was doing the right thing. Surely, the woman who turned me into the man I am today, is more than a filthy, perverted paedophile?"

The static between them turned glacial.

"You _dare,"_ she gasped, "You dare-"

"Yes I dare," agreed Christian smoothly. "Your ultimatum has made me daring. I dare because I'm suddenly seeing things in a different light, Elena. I'm seeing you, in a different light. I'm seeing you in the same light that the criminal justice system would see you. I'm seeing you in the same light that the female inmates up in the Central California Women's Facility would see you. A pervert. A woman who doesn't sleep with men, but instead seduces the teenage boy her friend entrusted her with."

" _Christian,_ how can you-"

"How can I what, Elena? Wake up and smell the fucking paedophilia? I think the more apt question is how is it that a man of my intelligence took so long to see the blindingly obvious. And you can hate Anastasia for my burgeoning clarity all you want, but the truth is, I've had my doubts about our fucked-up relationship long before I met her. The older I get, the stronger those doubts grow. When I walk out of a coffee shop, as a thirty-one-year-old man and see fifteen-year-old girls walk in. I look at them in their youth and their innocence and I feel ill. I recall the things I was doing at fifteen, the things I was having _done_ to me at fifteen and my stomach clenches. I was a fucking child, Elena. A boy. You were a mature woman. Not even a young woman. And you sought me out. You cast your spell over me and I've never been able to break it."

He breathed deeply, hardly believing the words being spoken were tumbling from his own mouth.

"Until now."

A silence so loud it screamed filled the line.

"I cannot believe I'm hearing this," she whispered, "I cannot believe the words you are saying are your own. I saved you. I rescued you from yourself. Everything I did, I did for you. You grew to love it. You grew to need it. You grew into the man you are today from the way I trained you as a boy. How _dare_ you call the things I did for you by such a hideous, filthy title. How _dare_ you accuse me of such disgusting perversion? You were practically a man-"

"I was a fifteen-year-old boy with a fucked up past and a fucked-up mind. I needed help, sure, but not the kind of help you offered me. You've done irrepealable damage to me, Elena. I was probably always going to be a Dom. It's who I am. But the level of my predilections, the control I have to wield…that's on you. You wanted me isolated. You wanted me alone. All so that you could hold supreme power over me. That's what gets you off. Supreme, unfettered power. Anastasia threatens that for you. She wields a different power over me, a healthy power. And you can't handle it, can you? That's why you don't want me to-"

"Don't want you to make a damned fool of yourself. For the second time. It's she who's put these dirty, repulsive thoughts in your head. It's she who's labelled what we had as this perverted, sickening thing. It's she-"

"Shut up, Elena. For once in your life just shut the fuck up."

He ran a hand through his tousled, auburn hair. His mind ached under the onslaught of delayed realisations. He didn't even know where his pent-up rage was coming from, but he knew he couldn't stuff it back in. Clarity engulfed him. Her ultimatum had perhaps been the best thing she had ever done for him. Afforded him the possibility of a clean break.

"Elena. I am going to have our business interests dissolved. I'll see you're not adversely affected in the financial sense. There will be no need for further contact between you and I. Let the lawyers handle it. You wanted a choice? Here it is. It's Anastasia. It's always been Anastasia and it's always going to be Anastasia. You and I are finished. There will be no further contact. I thought I could never be me without you Elena, but I know better now. I know I sure as shit can. I can be an entirely better version of myself, without you. If you attempt to contact me again, I will ruin you. The statute of limitations on child sexual abuse in Washington is particularly flexible and I have the finest lawyers money can buy."

"You don't mean this. You cannot mean this. Christian, I loved you as a boy and I love you now. In my own way. You were-"

"The outlet for your sickness. Yes, I was. But no more, Elena. Our chapter is closed."

A lightness was spreading through him, tingling in every extremity. He bowed his head under the weight of it, thoughts of Anastasia burning him. The purity of her. The way she made him feel cleaner just by being close. This was another step along the way to winning her back. He had to shed himself of his darkness to step into her light. He was always going to be Dominant. He was born that way. But he could remove the shackles that chained him to Elena. He could remove some of the twisted sickness of his past.

"What will you do when she breaks your heart for the second time?"

He laughed then, a sardonic laugh, dripping with scorn at her desperate attempt to contain him.

"Aren't you the one who always told me I didn't have a heart?"

"Christian, I-"

"Heed my warning. This will be the last we ever speak if you value your freedom, reputation and lifestyle."

" _Christian,_ you will not do this-"

"Goodbye, Elena."

The phone line went dead. Putting it down, he slumped against the pillows and with a small smile on his face, drifted into a dreamless sleep of rare peace.

Tomorrow would be a brand new day.

…..

TBC

….


	10. Chapter 10

_"_ _Goodbye, Elena."_

She didn't breathe as she clawed the phone slowly down from her ear, eyeing Diana as she sat slumped in the corner of her expansive living room, her head bowed. Elena's throat constricted with rage as she ran through his words. Scrutinised them. Relived them. A dangerous sense of ire shivered through her as the enormity of his speech engulfed her. She closed her eyes. Took in a deep lungful of air. When she opened her cold eyes once more, her course had already been decided.

No one spoke to her like that and lived happily ever after.

Not even Christian T Grey.

She waved a well-manicured claw in the direction of the morose Diana. She had been captivated by the elusive Mr Grey. Thrilled with her chance to belong to him. She had been deliberately late, just to give him an excuse to flay her. To show him the reach of her limits. Her sky-high limits. She had been so close, too. His bared torso had been within inches of her willing, supple flesh. Before this _Anastasia_ person had ruined all. Hours and hours later, she still skulked in Elena's apartment, waiting for her to make it right. To give her back her chance. As her big eyes took in the grim expression on the elder woman's face, she knew it wasn't to be.

"Come here, Diana child."

She raised herself slowly, unfurling legs that never seemed to end with grace. Elena watched her with a calculating gaze, her mind working faster than Diana's poor neurons could ever fire. She spread a warm smile across her face. Artifice that was as impressive as it was contemptuous. The young woman walked to her, misery splashed across her face before plopping down in front of her in a dejected heap.

"He doesn't want to see me again, does he? What did I do, Mrs Lincoln? What did I do wrong?"

Elena's inner demons grinned at the airheaded question as her outer mask frowned in sympathy.

"Nothing, Diana," she murmured silkily, "You did nothing wrong my girl. Nothing at all. It's this _Anastasia_ I told you about. She's a curse. A poison. She got her hooks in my Christian once before and I thought she'd done the worst damage a person could do before she took her flight. I nursed him through his heartbreak, thinking it merciful that she had at least stopped leading him on. Making a fool of him. And now? Now she's _back._ That little tramp is back, Diana, and it simply cannot be."

She reached out a hand bedecked with glittering jewels and stroked the girl's cheek tenderly.

"You don't want her to destroy him, do you? You care about Christian, don't you?"

Diana nodded breathlessly. Too stupid to see she was to be a mere puppet in an unfolding show.

"I do."

"Good," crooned Elena, "It's so good to see a young woman like you caring for my boy like that. He deserves someone like you, Diana. Someone who can please him. Serve him. Ensure his every need is accommodated. You can do that, can't you?"

Wide eyes grew glassy with wanton lust.

"I can."

Elena's inner demons did a little cartwheel.

"Christian can't see the truth, Diana. The tramp. That's what we'll call her from now on. Her ridiculous name is not good enough for either of our mouths to utter. The tramp must be taken out of the equation before she destroys him. Because she will. She'll rip him apart and walk away like she's a fucking beacon of purity. She just wants him for his money. Last time, she manipulated him into buying her cars, computers. She even made him buy her a _publishing house_ just so she could work there. No one else would employ her. And he was so taken with her disgusting tricks that he bought it and more. He would've bought her the world, Diana. She who thought him filthy, perverted and sick. You can see why we can't let that happen again, can't you?"

Diana's mouth was a perfect "o" as she nodded vigorously.

Elena couldn't believe one person could be so gormless as she smiled warmly.

"I knew I could count on you," she crooned. "And it's a good thing you're here because I can't help Christian alone. The tramp, she's jealous of me. Bitterly jealous. She knows I see right through her filthy little tricks. She's told my boy that he has to cut ties with me. After everything I've done for him, after everything I've practically raised him to be. Can you believe it? And he's going along with it because he's under her spell. Yet again. And nothing I say or do will break that spell. The only thing that can break it is her true colours being shown for the whole world to see. That's where you can help him. You want to help him break the spell, don't you? I cannot be seen to be involved, so it has to be you. He's going to need someone to be there for him when this madness all goes to shit and who better than you? You do this Diana, and you will be back in that penthouse before you can say _Escala."_

The young woman burned with desire as she recalled his glistening torso, his smoking eyes.

"I'm in, Mrs Lincoln. I've never met anyone like him before. I want him. I need him. I have to be his."

"But will you do whatever it takes to get him? Destroy anyone who stands in your way?"

She nodded. Her eyes blazed with sincerity.

"I will."

Elena smirked with evil, vindictive pleasure on the inside whilst smiling warmly and homely on the outside.

"The let us get to work, my girl. There is much to do and very little time to do it."

As the conversation grew dark and sordid in the flickering light of the opulent living room, far away an oblivious Anastasia stared at the send button on her laptop as if it were a puzzling piece of a new-age art. Closing her eyes, her stomach full of anti-pain medication and a warm, tingling feeling, she shook her head with a small grin.

Why the fuck not?

Thing couldn't exactly get any worse.

* * *

 **From:** Anastasia Steele

 **Subject:** Second Chances

 **Date:** May 23rd 2017 - 07:08

 **To:** Christian Grey

Mr Grey,

I have decided that your proposal requires a more detailed elaboration.

Perhaps you could deliver your pitch more ably over a business lunch? I'm free today.

Pain medication is consumed. As per Doctor's orders. (not yours)

See you soon, I hope. (I think)

 **Anastasia Steele**

 **Freelance author, Freelance Author Cemetery, PLC**

 **The cutest and the fluffiest**

* * *

Hitting send, she slumped back on her pillows with a staggering déjà vu coursing through her veins. She'd been here before, her heart thumping from email communication alone. Her pulse trembling when his name popped up in her inbox. That had been their original beginning, and as she lay back on her ratty pillows with a flutter of hope in her stomach, all she could do was wish for a different ending.

Hundreds of miles away, Elena raised a carved brow at the ashen Diana in front of her.

"You have all the information you need for now, my girl. This is just the first step of many."

She pushed the envelope deeper into the sub's hands.

"But together and eventually…we will destroy that little bitch and claim Christian back for our own."

She smiled a cold smile that didn't reach her glacial eyes.

"As it should be."

….

TBC

….


	11. Chapter 11

"You didn't order for me. Maybe you really can change."

He smirked as she sat, a youthful grin. Flicking his napkin over his lap and sipping iced water, his eyes were a lighter shade of grey then she remembered them. He sat taller. Of course, he always had perfect posture but as she slipped behind her side of the table, he seemed different. Carefree. As carefree as Christian Grey could be, that is.

"Small things make for large wonders, Miss Steele."

"You've renamed your penis?"

He choked into his water glass. A passing waiter shot him a look of askance as he passed, muttering something about "new money" under his breath. Wiping stray droplets of water from his face with a wide gaze, Christian set his glass down slowly.

"Still such a smart little mouth," he mused, humour etching his tone, "But if I recall correctly, you never had any complaints about my endowment. I seem to remember, as a matter of fact, how you used to cry out for the-"

"What looks good? The steak?"

He rolled his eyes and noted her blush with pleasure.

"Yes. You should order it." His gaze turned sombre, and the needs within him surged to the top of the lake of serenity he had banished them to. "You're skin and bone, Anastasia. You've lost far too much weight. You must eat something substantial, from herein on."

She shot him a look. His stomach lurched as he forced his needs under the surface of silky waters, sighing before tilting his head in surrender.

"If you were looking for a recommendation, I would suggest the steak. But of course, the choice is entirely up to you."

She bit back a smile at the tongue-in-cheek gentlemanly manner.

"Was that hard for you?"

His white teeth glinted, the perfect contrast to his strong jaw.

"You have no idea, Miss Steele, you have simply no idea."

She stared at him, drinking him in. He was still surreal to her. Still too good to be true. In the broad daylight and without the raw shock of seeing him again for the first time, he was even more beautiful. His hair was a bit longer, flopping into his eyes, softening his features. His skin was slightly more tanned. The beginnings of very faint crows' feet pricked at the corners of his eyes, bringing out the grey hue she'd never tired of marvelling. There was a level of comfort beginning to seep into her. He had always made her feel impregnably safe and secure, if he wasn't terrifying her himself. Given the shitstorm that had been her life for as long as she could think back, it was a welcome breath of serenity.

The threat of that serenity being taken from her suddenly loomed large.

"You came," she said quietly, "I wanted you to come. But what are we doing, Christian? What are we doing here?"

He waved away a waiter as he approached, order book in hand, handling the turn of the conversation with ease.

"Like I told you last night, I want you. I need you. In whatever way I can have you. That's what we're doing here. To see if you want me. In whatever way you want me to be. I don't have it in me to beat around the bust, Anastasia. I thought I had everything I could ever hope for before you fell into my office. I was filthy rich, disgustingly handsome and had more than enough subs' who were willing to satisfy my every whim and quench my thirst whenever I desired."

He smiled nostalgically, toying with his glass as she listened with a breath caught in her windpipe.

"But now none of that is enough. Not since that day. Not since all the days after that day. The night you left was one of the worst in my life. Made all the more unbearable by the knowledge that it was me who pushed you to it. And every day after that night has been meaningless. My business means nothing, my extracurricular exploits mean even less so. So I don't have the will to be coy. We're here because I'm willing to be a fucking soccer dad if that's what it takes to get you back. I'll drive a damned mini-van if I have to."

Her jaw slackened.

A silence drifted between them, muting the noise of other diners, encasing them in their own bubble.

Before her snorting laugh, far from a graceful giggle, burst it.

His eyes narrowed at her mirth.

"I'm sorry," Ana cackled. "But just the _thought_ of you as a _soccer dad_." She descended into another fit of laughter as he growled. "You'd be so cute too. In your mini-van. Knowing you it'd be a mini-helicopter but you'd be very cute nonetheless." Her eyes continued to shimmer with laughter as he threw his eyes up to heaven.

"Here I am, positively pouring my cold and dead heart out to you, and you _laugh."_

She sobered, her brow furrowing.

"Your heart isn't cold or dead. No matter how hard you try and pretend it so, Mr Grey."

His lips twitched.

"Still seeing the sunshine in the darkness. I see some things do not change, Miss Steele."

The waiter, tiring of their occupation of a prime table with no billable produce to show for it, suddenly swooped down upon them. After listening to Christian's order, Ana's stomach suddenly rumbled with hunger as her nose became aware of all the delicious smells wafting around. She warred with herself for a moment as the waiter turned to her expectantly. She had to ignore Christian's smug look as she ordered the steak with all the trimmings.

"Only because I'm hungry," she growled as the waiter stalked off, "No other reason."

He inclined his head mockingly.

"Sure thing, sure thing."

Her glare was glacial.

"God, you're still as annoying as ever. I see some things do not change, Mr Grey."

"Fair point, well ma-"

"I will stab you with this fork."

His eyes shone with laughter as he backed off in feigned fear before the worry bit him again. He had debated on how to tell her. He didn't want it to come across as a cheap bargaining chip. He didn't want it to come across like some sort of fucked up noble sacrifice. He had debated with himself all the way to lunch, trying to find a delicate way to bring it up. Perhaps he could wait till later to tell her, if there was a later. Perhaps he could map out a plan to-

"Elena and I are no longer in contact. We have no relationship. I have cut all ties with her."

He closed his eyes in chagrin.

Well-educated, well-read and well-travelled and he blurted it out like a drunken simpleton.

Ana's head snapped up from her contemplative consideration of the linen tablecloth. Her eyes grew round with confusion and disbelief. She opened her mouth, closed it, and opened it again. He watched her with a hammering heart, knowing that the matter under discussion had been one of their biggest and thorniest issues in the past.

"What did you say?"

He winced inwardly at the utter bewilderment in her voice.

Had he been that blind to Elena, for that long?

He supposed he had.

"She called me last night," he said quickly, needing to get it all out before Ana's gaze could harden any further. "Demanding to know why I went to your side. Screaming about this, that and the other thing. Insisting I return to Seattle at once. Warning me off you, telling me I would regret opening my life up to you again. We argued. She gave me an ultimatum. A stone-cold ultimatum. I could either have her in my life, or I could have you in my life, but I could not have both. She demanded I choose. Her or you. Then and there."

His eyes bored into hers as he reaffirmed the decision he knew to be right. Righter than right.

"I chose you. I made it very clear that I chose you. We argued. Things were said and realisations were made. By the end of the call…I saw her as you see her. I saw our past as you see it. I told her such and the conversation grew even more hostile. I warned her that she was no longer a part of my life and if she didn't abide by that new-found fact, I would ruin her. I would ruin her in whatever ways lay open to me. The call ended with her being under no illusions as to my decision and my priorities." He shifted awkwardly. "I just…I thought you should know."

Ana's heart forgot to beat.

Her eyes forgot to blink.

"You got rid of Mrs Robinson?" she whispered in a slow shock. "For me?"

He smiled a very rare, very genuine smile, and spoke a very rare insight.

"For us."

Ana's gaping was interrupted by the arrival of an indecently heaped tray of food. Over the efficient hands of waiters and waitresses, she stared at him in a stupor of shock. _Mrs Robinson had been given her marching orders._ She did not doubt he spoke the truth. She could see it in his face, hear it in his voice. The surreal nature of it all drowned her. The waiters and waitresses vanished, leaving a mountain of food in their wake.

He stared hungrily at her, desperate to gauge her reaction.

"You know…what she did? You know now? What it was?"

He paled slightly, inclining his head a fraction.

"I know," he said slowly, "But I don't want to-"

"You don't have to," she interrupted quietly, "You don't have to talk about it. I understand that. Who wouldn't understand that? But she is never going to leave you alone, Christian. Or us. If there is an us. She thinks she owns you, has a right to you. She isn't just going to stand there quietly so you can move on without her. She won't allow it."

His gaze immediately hardened.

"It isn't case of what she will and will not allow, Anastasia. It is a case of what _I_ will and will not allow. And I will not allow her to poison another day of my life. I will not allow her to harm me. But more to the fucking point, I will _not_ allow her to hurt you. I would destroy her first. With whatever it took, no matter who or what got burned in the process. I give you my word."

She forgot to breathe, her face reddening with oxygen deprivation.

"Breathe," he instructed calmly, "In and out, Anastasia. In and out."

Her lungs expanded gratefully, tipping their cap to his patient guidance.

"You've changed," she murmured softly, her mind keening with shock. "You're not the same."

He smiled and in that moment, she couldn't tell if it was a smile of terrible happiness or a smile of terrible sadness.

"I have," he admitted, "I've had no choice. A person like you changes a person like me."

She chewed her lip. He closed his eyes, the sight jerking the usual sensation below.

"The elephant is still in the room, Christian. What you've done about Mrs Robinson is incredible. I won't lie and say that back in Seattle I prayed for the day when you'd see her for what she is. That change is welcome. And no matter what happens, I can't even tell you how glad I am that that awful creature is out of your life. But how can you possibly say that you'll turn _vanilla_ for me? You're Dominant. You're Dominant in every single thing you do. From the company you run to the lunch you order. It's who you are. How can you change that? _Why_ should you change that?"

Over the food that lay untouched, his eyes flashed.

"I know I cannot change that, Anastasia," he said softly, "But I can learn to control it. I can learn to live with pushing those needs down. I'm doing it right now. It burns, but I'm doing it. I see you sitting there, skin and bone from failing to take care of yourself, and I want to take control of you. I want to see you eat and then I want to punish you for not doing so in the first place. I'm palm-twitchingly mad right now, but you cannot see it. Thoughts of baring you, taking you over my knee and spanking you long and hard until you eat three square meals a day are filling my mind. But I will not do those things. I will simply provide the food and hope that you eat it. I can control my urges. I will control them. If that's what it takes to be with you then so be it. I will control them if it means I get another chance with you."

Her eyes widened to blue pools of shock.

She glanced down at her steak.

A sudden urge burned her. She flickered her gaze between the succulent meat and the equally succulent tycoon. The conflict she recalled so strongly she could taste it, dogged her. The struggle between hating what he loved and loving what he practiced. She worried her bottom lip. Under the linen table cloth, he grew hard and closed his eyes in despair. Hungry for something no waiter or waitress could bring him. She pushed the steak around the plate, allowing her prime instincts to overrun her intellectual ones for the first time in a long, long time.

"You want to bare me, take me over your knee and spank me long and hard for not eating?"

His eyes burned with lust.

"Yes. But like I said, that will not happen. That need never happen again _. Ever_."

She pushed the steak around once more, ducking her head and peeping up at him through dark lashes.

"Not even if I want it to?"

He inhaled sharply. His pupils dilated. His heart quickened as he groaned.

"Jesus Christ, Miss Steele…what are you trying to do to me?"

She, despite her brain screaming at her otherwise, pushed her plate away with a flourish of defiance. Her eyes sparkled with a coy invitation. Her voice was low and alluring. She glanced pointedly at the clearly rejected steak and arched a brow, tipping her head to the side, sending her hair spooling over her right shoulder.

His question of second chances and changes rang in her ears.

Her answer was impulsive and instinctive. Where had being analytical and cautious ever gotten her?

She chewed her bottom lip and took a chance.

"The question is, Mr Grey, what are you going to do to me?"

…..

A/N: Just to clarify, this will be a HEA, but definitely not straight away and not without any obstacles!

….


	12. Chapter 12

He sucked in a sharp breath. His tanned face brightened so hard and so fast her eyes burned. But within a blink of a scorched iris, it was gone. A stormy sunset quickly eclipsed the hopeful sunrise and he let out a sigh that bewildered her. Staring down at the table for a moment, his jaw was clenched tightly. She opened her mouth slowly, before shutting it with a snap. It may have been six years, but she still knew his processes. She allowed him to chew whatever it was over in his head. She had no choice but to allow the nervous increase in her heartrate. What had she said? Had she put him off? She closed her eyes as the familiar ocean of insecurity washed over her.

It had never been, and nor would it ever be, an easy thing to stay calm around Christian Grey.

"Your words contradict your actions," he murmured eventually, sending her eyes snapping to his, "You say one thing and you mean another, you mean one thing and you say another. How am I to know what you want, Anastasia? How am I to know what you need? The lifestyle seems to both repulse and excite you at the same time. Belts are clearly a hard enough limit to tear us clean apart, but I can see you're becoming aroused by the thoughts of me spanking you." His gaze flickered down to the pert cheeks she was sitting on. His voice infused with a gritty longing, tinged with frustration. "It's enough to drive a man stir fucking crazy. You drive me crazy, Miss Steele, you're hazardous to my health. My brain can process a lot, but the constant stream of mixed messages makes it a little…muddled."

Her mouth popped into that perfect "o" that made him want to bury himself in her.

A groan flew to his lips as he recalled her complete lack of a gag reflex.

His side of the table cloth twitched. Under the table.

"I…" her nose screwed up in her own frustration. She had never thought of it like that before. Was she sending him mixed messages? Her brow furrowed. It had occurred to her before, she couldn't say it hadn't. There were many aspects of the life he had tried to contract her into that terrified her, sent her running for the hills. But then, there were many aspects of the life he had tried to contract her into, that thrilled her. Pleased her. The first time he had brought her to the brink of ecstasy with a riding crop biting into the back of her thighs and searing pleasingly into her bared ass flashed into her mind.

Her face flushed a scarlet red.

His lips crooked at the corners.

"I believe you are reminiscing, Miss Steele."

She shot him what was to be a ferocious look, utterly failing in the process. His lips twitched even further.

"No-one like a know-it-all, Mr Grey."

He laughed then and the sound of his ringing amusement sent a wave of pleasure crashing over her. His laugh, his pure laughter, was a joy to behold. It was rare and it was fleeting, but it was worth the wait and it was worth capturing.

"Oh, I think you like me," he countered, still amused, "In fact, I think you like me very much."

She rolled her eyes. A bubble popped up and encased them in memories of years gone by.

They both stared. Blue eyes on grey, grey eyes on blue.

He was the first to break the nostalgic silence.

"I see you have truly fallen back into some bad habits. Judging by the way you're sitting, you remember how I tried to cure you of these rare shortcomings of yours?" His gaze trickled down to her folded legs, a sense of lust burning him from the inside out. "But your eyes," he murmured, his own coming back to rest on her once again burning face, "Why do they light up like that, Anastasia? Hmm? Why do you get excited at the thoughts of something you said you couldn't want, couldn't have, couldn't be?"

She swallowed.

With supreme difficulty.

"There were some things," she whispered, "That weren't exactly…unappealing to me back then. But the feminist and logical side of my brain thought they ought to be. Unappealing, I mean. So I tried to find them unappealing. I tried and I failed." Her nervous gaze met his steady counterpart and she bushed even more furiously. But she persevered. They had been through too much, been too far apart for half-truths now. "I liked, at least I think I liked, the spankings. Not so much when they were happening, the punishment ones at least, but after. I felt…safe. Clean. Calm."

She frowned.

"And tired."

Before she could lose momentum, she carried on slowly.

"There were times when I loved how controlling you were. There were times when I hated how controlling you were. There were times when I would get wet just thinking about how you would react to something. There were times when I could angry just thinking about how you would react to something. There were times when I thought I could be happy with the limitations of our relationship. There were times when I couldn't believe what I had gotten myself into. There were times when I thought I could be everything you wanted and needed me to be, thought I wanted and needed those things too. There were times when I would lay awake and stare at the ceiling and wonder if my taking over Kate's interview that day was the biggest mistake of my life."

She sucked in a lungful of air and ducked her gaze down, shocked by her own speech.

Silence hung over them like a mist.

"I see," he said softly, "That's quite a lot of _there were times_ that I never knew about."

He paused, running his long fingers over the linen tablecloth in contemplation.

"Why didn't you ever tell me you were feeling that way? I think it might have helped, don't you?"

She looked up at him with embarrassment flickering in her eyes, but resolved to continue with her brutal stream of honesty.

"Because I was afraid of losing you," she whispered. "You were rigid about what you were looking for. I felt like you were moulding me to that image rather than the mould softening to fit me. You were _Christian Grey_ and I was just me. Just me. I'd never even thought of a man until the day I fell into your office. You were new. You were exciting. You were terrifying, but you were exciting. Before I could blink, I was in too deep. I felt too much. I felt too much, too differently. I thought if I told you about all my doubts and reservations about the sort of relationship you wanted, you'd just find someone else. Women threw themselves at you then," her gaze lingered over a nearby staring waitress. "Women throw themselves at you _now._ How could I risk making it easier for them by telling you that I wasn't weak enough to be who you wanted me to be?"

He raised a delicate brow.

"Weak enough?"

She tilted her head.

"You don't think a grown woman falling at the feet of her male counterpart is weak?"

He said nothing for the most eternal moment. The silence vibrated with the sudden intensity of the conversation. The sigh that eventually billowed from him was rib-shattering. He shook his head slowly, pinning her to her seat with his scrutinizing stare.

"The grown woman that falls to the feet of her male counterpart is a strong, fearsome woman, Anastasia."

She blinked. He smiled at her confusion and took a breath, explaining something he should have explained a long time ago.

"Submission, true submission, is a sign of the purest strength. A sign of raw strength. When an independent, intelligent and intuitive woman chooses to give herself to a man whom she trusts, chooses to grant him control over her, she holds all the power. You cannot give control without having control, Anastasia. The submissive is the true source of power in all D/s relationships. All real ones, anyway. When a submissive hands over the reins, it's because they hold them. They can take them back, yank them away at any time. The Dominant merely caretakes them. The Dominant relies upon the submissive for the source of his pleasure and his purpose. The submissive can relieve him of these things in the utterance of a single word."

His eyes lingered over her face and his heart jumped over its customary beat.

"You have no idea the power you hold over me, Anastasia," he whispered. "You never did. You had me on the ropes the moment you tripped over your feet into my office. Yes, I wanted to control and dominate you. Yes, I wanted to punish and pleasure you. I started off lusting after you as a sub, but as time wore on, the lines got blurred. The boundaries started to disintegrate. I wasn't who I thought I was around you. I was still Christian Grey on the outside, but the person who was really in control, the person who really held all the cards, was you."

His eyes burned like smouldering charcoal as his voice adopted a soft hue.

"It was always you."

Her mouth swung open like a toy-doll.

Her eyes popped in bulging surprise.

"Well, fuck me."

He smirked, the levity of the situation washing over him like a welcomingly cool breeze.

"Don't tempt me."

She laughed then, also relishing the small reprieve. His eyes fluttered closed. He could listen to her laugh all day. To him, it rang with a purity that seemed to spread its cleansing glow over him as well. He felt lighter with her, lighter still when she laughed, when she giggled. Her happiness was his happiness, as unfamiliar with the concept as he was. She was chewing her lip in contemplation and a surge of gurgling blood flooded into his length. He sighed. Ordered it to settle.

It wasn't the time.

"A medley," she muttered to herself, brow furrowed in contemplation. "Perhaps a medley…"

He stared blankly at her.

"Like a song?"

Her head sprang up. She seemed surprised he was still there. She glanced down at their rapidly cooling food and shook her head, her fringe swaying that way that drove him nuts.

"No, not like a song. Like a mash-up. Of people. Of wants and needs. A compromise."

She looked over at him and cocked her head to the side.

"Let me put in your terms. We could merge. You wouldn't acquire me, we'd come together."

"Come together? Fuck yes. I like the sound of that."

She threw her napkin at him. He caught it grinning.

"Be serious," she chided, failing miserably to hide her own grin, "I'm talking business here."

He waved a permissive hand.

"You have the floor and my rapt attention, Miss Steele."

"Good," she muttered dryly. "Because this is complicated so listen up, Grey. As we've just seen, we both suffered some misconceptions about the other. I thought some things that weren't true and you thought some things that weren't true. We had a contract that didn't serve our needs. I propose that we rewrite that contract. Orally. As in, not a legal and binding document, but an agreement. Between two people. Between…two partners. We take the best of the original contract, dabble in some subtractions. Add in some additions, alter what needs to be altered until we have an understanding that best suits both parties."

Her heat beating like an over-zealous snare drum, she tipped her head up at him.

"What say you, Mr Grey?"

His breath hitched in his chest as he struggled to absorb his apparent good fortune.

"I say where do I orally sign, Miss Steele."

She grinned at him, a relaxation spreading from the top of her head to the tips of her toes. She raised her water glass and smirking, he mirrored her actions, his own heart behaving erratically. The clink of their agreement was soft. With an impossible elation ballooning in him, he raised a brow and smiled one of his rare, youthful smiles.

"To the future and all things oral, Miss Steele."

She rolled her eyes deliberately, shifting in her seat so that her shapely ass slipped into his view.

He smirked hungrily.

"To the future and all things-"

"Excuse me, Mr Grey?"

The waiter, who had appeared out of nowhere, side-stepped to reveal a young woman standing behind him. He opened his mouth to perhaps convey some sort of message, some sort of introduction. But the staggeringly stunning brunette beat him to it. The badge proclaiming her to be an attendee of a conference down the hall named her as Michaela Freeman. Ana glanced from she to Christian, to the backdrop of a retreating waiter, with a sickening feeling in her stomach. Michaela spoke in a confidant and delicate tone, ignoring Ana completely, her eyes fixated firmly on a rapidly paling millionaire.

"So glad I caught you. I've been trying to ring. My calls keep bouncing back."

She smiled, revealing a set of perfect, even teeth.

"Luckily enough, Diana messaged me saying you were in town. What a happy coincidence."

She threw her head to the side and her beauty was spine-tingling.

"I just thought you should know that I'm pregnant. I'm pregnant and it's yours. A mishap with the pill I think is to blame. I guess even Dr Greene has flaws."

She smiled an oddly cold smile.

"You're going to be a father, Sir."

…

TBC

…


	13. Chapter 13

A lashing of cold dread whipped against him as he sat with his mouth swinging open. Grey eyes darkened with the rawest of shock. Michaela stood in her halo of beauty, a slender hand cupping a barely showing stomach, her smirk both proud and secretive. The restaurant seemed to mute itself. All Christian could hear was the frantic beat of his own hammering heart. His eyes flickered to Anastasia, waiting for her to leap up from the table and run from him. Run from him for the second time. His soul, if he believed in such things, braced itself to be ripped apart for the second time.

But to his intense and unparalleled shock, her face was utterly impassive.

It was she who broke the oppressive silence.

"What is she offering you?" she murmured softly, "What's in this for you?"

Turning to her with distaste painted across her cosmetically pretty face, Michaela couldn't hide the ugliness within from flashing across her features. She assessed Ana with a sneer playing about her lips. By the standards of Christian's usual girls, she fell far short. She was much too drab, much too pale and much too uncoordinated. The hurt she had heard in Diana's voice was all the more justified the longer she took in the gaunt looking creature that Christian had decided to forsake all others for.

"I'm afraid I neither know who you are or what you speak of," she said coolly, "Forgive me."

Ana allowed herself a brief smile.

Christian stared at the burgeoning exchange in his continuing state of silent shock.

"Oh, I think you know exactly who I am," she countered quietly. "I think you hate me for who I am. I think you sympathise with Diana for who I am and I think you're doing Elena Lincoln's bidding for who I am. I think she's concocted this tragic little scam in an inane attempt to send me running for the hills. So that she could then say to Christian _look. Look at the kind woman she is. You are much better off without her._ And then of course when the time came, when he was suitably disenfranchised with the whole idea of us and what could be, you would suddenly suffer a most unfortunate miscarriage. It would be terrible, heartrending. But it would be looked back on as a terrible sacrifice that saved Christian from an unfulfilled life."

Ana smiled sadly at the look of burning desire in Michaela's eyes.

Every word she had spoken was true.

Turning to a pale and frowning Christian, she arched a brow and spoke with a certain sadness.

"I did tell you. I did tell you that Mrs Robinson would never let you go. Not without this. Not without a fight. And certainly not without a certain degree of underhanded tricks and a campaign of malice. That's all this is. This girl is no more pregnant with your child than Taylor is. Dr Greene is, by your own admission, the best OBGYN in Seattle. She's the best of the best and she doesn't make mistakes. If she's pregnant, it's not yours." She shrugged then, a sense of definitive courage overtaking her. "And even if she was, I wouldn't care. I'm not about to run, so stop looking at me as if I am. I ran once and I mightn't be perfect, but I do try to not to make the same mistake twice."

Her lips twitched, her and Christian locking in a moment that Michaela could never infringe.

"Whatever happens, the merger is still on the table, Mr Grey."

Michaela looked on in a rapidly ballooning sense of utter shock. She stared at the soft hue that gave Christian's eyes an unearthly quality when he looked at her. She stared at the ease in which the two spoke, with words and without. She stared at the obvious connection between them, stared at the equally obvious sense of ease that radiated from one to another. She swallowed. The rumours were true. The rumours were really fucking true. This girl, this utterly plain and oblivious girl, had achieved the previously unachievable. She had acquired what she and all the others had desired, only to be denied time and time again. Somehow, someway and somewhere along the line, she had done it. She had wrangled it. She had _gotten_ it.

 _More._

Her breath hitched as a sense of rejection burned her.

She was beautiful. She was one of the most beautiful women he had ever had. She knew it and he knew it. She was a natural born submissive. She had pleased him. She had served him. She had surrendered herself to him. And it had never been enough. When she began to desire more, as they all eventually did, he had promptly ended their arrangement. He had dismissed her like a fucking doorman. Like she had meant nothing. Looking at the way he stared hungrily at the unspeakably banal Anastasia, she knew it was because she _had_ meant nothing.

Absolutely, categorically, nothing.

Envy was an ugly trait and it produced ugly actions.

"I am pregnant and it is yours, Sir," Michaela murmured, turning a doe-eyed gaze on a now stony Christian. "I was the last sub you had before Diana, you were the last Dom I had since I have acquired this condition. You were the last man I had. You are the father of this baby. You are my child's father. He or she grows inside me every day. Half yours. Maybe your eyes, your hair. Maybe a mini-you. Either way, this is happening and the future must be planned for, Sir."

The interminable silence returned.

To the backdrop of oblivious and chattering diners, life-long decisions were being considered.

Ana looked to Christian, who looked to Michaela, who looked to both of them.

Putting an abrupt end to the silent stare-off, the young tycoon rose in one fluid movement. Extending a hand to Anastasia, ignoring Michaela's widening eyes at the familiarity, he guided her from her seat. With a snap of the fingers on his free hand, he beckoned to the slim blonde to follow them. No-one spoke a word as the most oddly-comprised trio swept along. Walking as if he owned the place, which was quite possible, Christian pushed through a service door that led the three into a sparse corridor with nothing in it but a dinnerware trolley, laden down with dirty crockery. As the door swung shut, an eerie silence filled the narrow space. With an oddly pained look, Christian released Ana's hand and stepped away from her. His voice was quiet as he murmured. His head bowed.

"Forgive me."

With that, he turned his attention completely upon Michaela. Ana stood behind his back, she, to his front. He raised a brow and a subtle change began to wash over him. He stood taller. His face hardened. His eyes gleamed. His aura shifted, a coolness spooling over him. With an intake of breath that sent shudders through his torso, he pointed at the tiled floor. His voice was no longer quiet. It was clear, crisp and controlled.

"Kneel."

Her green eyes popped wide. Her mouth parted in wanton surprise. Her head tilted to the side.

His gaze hardened. Shifting slightly to the side, Ana saw the transformation and swallowed deeply.

Dominant Christian.

"I said," he repeated icily, " _Kneel._ Do it. Do it now."

With one last look of astonishment, she fell gracefully to her knees. Her slender hands came to rest on her shapely thighs, dressed in expensive jeans, smooth palms upwards. Her chin tipped onto her chest, her eyes rooted firmly upon the floor. Her poise took on a somehow dainty slump. She oozed subservience. She radiated a desire to please, at any and all costs. Ana's breath stilled in her lungs. She watched with no oxygen as Christian walked slowly around her, circling her like a beast in the dense undergrowth.

"What is your name?"

She missed not a beat, quivering at the rough edge to his still smooth tone.

"Michaela Freeman."

"Whom do you serve?"

Ana's eyes widened as the shiver of pleasure ran through the slender frame.

"You, Sir."

He circled her once more, his gait slow and unhurried.

"You do not lie to whom you serve. Is that right?"

She breathed deeply, entering the most intricate layers of subspace at the very sound of his commanding voice, at the trace of his cologne assailing her nostrils. She was defenceless against him. She sank deeper and deeper from the dusty corridor the more and more she drank him in.

"Yes, Sir."

He circled her again.

"So, if I ask you a question, you will answer me promptly and truthfully. Correct?"

Her spine arched in unspoken longing.

"Yes, Sir."

He circled her again.

"If you do not answer me promptly and truthfully, you will be punished. Severely. Correct?"

A soft mewl escaped her bowed head as she nodded demurely.

"Yes, Sir."

He circled her again.

"Are you pregnant? At this very moment, is there a child within you? If so, how far along are you?"

She inclined her bowed head.

"Yes, Sir. I'm seventeen weeks along."

Her voice rang with sincerity. His stomach dropped. Ana's heart stilled.

He circled her again.

"And this child, is it mine? Is it biologically and unequivocally, mine?"

Silence.

He circled her again.

"You will answer me. You will answer me now or you will face the consequences."

Her voice dropped an octave. Her shoulders slumped. A barely supressed sob was bit back.

He circled her again.

This time, his voice was an animalistic snarl.

" _Is the fucking child mine?"_

Her voice was impossibly thin.

"No, Sir. It is not."

Christian would have happily chopped his balls off and offered them to the God of balls in that moment if it meant he could savour the relief that battered him for the rest of his days. Breathing out sharply, steadying his frantic heart, he forced himself to keep going. Forced himself to refrain from turning and gathering a silently staggered Anastasia into his arms.

He circled her again.

"And this fabrication," he murmured, his voice taking back it's silky hue, "It was concocted under Elena's orders? You are here under her instruction?"

She nodded slowly.

"Yes, Sir. Hers and Diana's."

He circled her again.

"You will relay a message to Elena for me. Do you understand?"

Tears began to drop slowly down her rosy cheeks.

"Yes, Sir."

He circled her again.

"You will tell her that anything she can think to do to me, I can return a thousand times over. You will tell her that this abomination, this debacle of today, is the only such stunt I will forgive. You will tell her that my warning was clear and that it was true. Should she ever, directly or indirectly, attempt to interfere with mine and Anastasia's life once more, I will leave her in ruination. I will destroy her. I will take everything she has and burn it in front of her. You will tell her this. You will tell her this word for word. You will tell her that this is her final warning. There will not be another. Do you understand me?"

He circled her again.

Her voice cracked, her mind not far behind.

"Yes, Sir."

He stopped mid-circle. A cleansing air seemed to drift over him. His eyes softened and his torso melted. His back lost some of its rigidity and his gaze was as pure as it could be as he turned back to her. The look in his eyes spoke the story of a thousand words. Ana stared back at him in a state of transfixion, her hand moving of its own accord to slip into his outstretched counterpart. He led her silently to the door, pushing it open, allowing the light to spill freely upon both their faces. Halting, Ana looked back at the girl on her knees and spoke in a crackly voice that portrayed her struggle to keep up.

"What about her?"

Looking over his shoulder at the back that was racking with silent sobs, Christian shrugged.

"She's in my past, Anastasia."

He threw an arm over her shoulder and guided her back into the vibrant dining hall. He looked down at her and felt a surety grip him. A rare smile lit up his face as he strolled with the biggest enigma of his life from the bustling hotel, breathing in the midday air with pleasure. Where there were going, they didn't know. They didn't care. She looked up at him, looking down at her, and matched his smile. A question played about her lips. Stopping under a large arched clock, she quirked a brow and gazed up at him.

"If she's your past, what am I?"

He grinned then. His roguish, boyish grin. The one that sent her wild below.

"My future."

…..

TBC

…..


	14. Chapter 14

She sat on her sofa. Everything around her was boxed up and labelled. It had been three days since the encounter with Michaela at the hotel, and since then, her whole life had been in flux. She and Christian had talked and fucked, fucked and talked. She couldn't get her fill of him and he of her. To her, he was still like a rare and exotic safari animal. Blink, and he was gone. As she sat there, he was indeed gone. Back to Seattle. Even filthy rich men had to tend to their businesses. Nearly a full working week away from Grey Enterprises and they were screaming out for him. He had reluctantly returned at her insistence, and she felt a void around her. Looking around, she didn't know how she had survived the past six years. It has been seven hours and his absence was like a dry thirst, cracking at her lips.

Tomorrow, she would open her door to a moving man, and her life would be uprooted.

The thoughts made her smile like a cat drunk on cream.

She refused to move in with him. She agreed to return to Seattle. She refused a job with him. She agreed to job-hunt on her own merits with his minimal as possible support. She refused to accept a car. She agreed to call upon Taylor's services whenever necessary. They had discussed much, but those were the most pressing agreements they had reached. The thoughts of him being close enough to her to reach, whenever she pleased, for as long as she pleased, made her giddy. She sat with her knees drawn to her chest and marvelled at the difference one drunk call and one week could make. Her cell pinged and she grinned greedily.

* * *

 **From:** Christian Grey

 **Subject:** Discussions (Continued)

 **Date:** May 28th 2017

 **To:** Anastasia Steele

Miss Steele,

I refer to our recent conversation concerning suitable living accommodations. You were dressed in a pair of white-silk panties and nothing else. You were, if I recall correctly, sitting on your kitchen counter. I give you these facts only to jog your memory.

I believe I may have found you a suitable apartment.

It's close enough to Escala and very safe.

Please see the link below and tell me if you approve.

I shall arrange matters immediately if you do.

 **Christian Grey**

 **CEO, Grey Enterprises Holdings, Inc**

* * *

She rolled her eyes at his clothing description and pressed the blue link provided. She frowned. Clearly, her definition of _as minimal as possible support_ was wildly different from his. The apartment he was proposing was a penthouse, of which he had cleverly blocked off the price-tag, though any dolt would realise it was a six-figure property. Her eyes narrowed as she flicked through the photos.

It was spectacular.

Sighing, she exited the portfolio and opened up a fresh e-mail.

* * *

 **From:** Anastasia Steele

 **Subject:** Sneaky Millionaires

 **Date:** May 28th 2017

 **To:** Christian Grey

Mr Grey,

I too refer to our recent communications regarding an appropriate housing solution. You were wearing jeans and no top, because you are a shameless exhibitionist, in love with his own abdominal muscles. I give you these facts to hopefully jog you into some semblance of humility.

That apartment is beautiful.

It is also a penthouse.

It is also, even though you've so cleverly tried to hide it, a multi-million-dollar property.

We agreed on _as minimal as possible support._

A small, out-of-the-way apartment, simple and understated will do fine.

 **Anastasia Steele**

 **Editor-in-Chief, Calling Mr Grey's Bullshit Weekly**

* * *

She grinned as she flopped deeper down onto the sofa. Some things would never change. The possibility of a fresh start loomed large and she found herself limp with happiness. Looking around the drab walls of the pokey apartment that had seen nothing but her failures, she couldn't wait to lock the door and never return. New York was to be put firmly in her past. For her, it wasn't the city of dreams. Far fucking from it. She would find a job. She would start anew. And like times before, she would try and navigate she and Christian's way through a myriad of obstacles and pitfalls, on the way to happiness. In whatever form that happiness took.

Normal was overrated.

That much, she had learned, in depth.

Her cell beeped.

* * *

 **From:** Christian Grey

 **Subject:** Sneaky Millionaires

 **Date:** May 28th 2017

 **To:** Anastasia Steele

Miss Steele,

I have worked very hard for my abdominal muscles. I like to look at them. And if I recall correctly, you like to look at them too. You like to look at them very much as matter of fact. I am beyond humility. I have never hidden this fact.

The apartment is technically not a penthouse.

So technically it is a mere residential dwelling like any other.

Technically fitting your aggravating demand for _as minimal as possible support._

Think on it. You may come to realise that, to me, that _is_ minimal support. Maddening girl.

Make sure you are ready for the movers in any case.

Taylor will collect you first thing in the morning. You are not riding with them. I don't know them.

 **Christian Grey**

 **CEO, Grey Enterprises Holdings, Inc**

 **Shameless Exhibitionist**

* * *

She rolled her eyes to high heaven.

Only Christian Grey could distrust a removal man. Still, a smile played about her face as she typed rapidly, a rare serenity coating her. The fluttering of wings in her stomach was a pleasant sensation. One she had lacked with Chad, even in the early days, and one she had lacked with Rhys, even in the earliest of days. These were Christian Grey wings and none other than he could conjure them up.

* * *

 **From:** Anastasia Steele

 **Subject:** Suspicious Pedants

 **Date:** May 28th 2017

 **To:** Christian Grey

Mr Grey,

Maybe I want to ride with the removal man. Perhaps he might be prettier than you. Perhaps he might have stronger abdominal muscles than you. Perhaps he might have an option of humility, too.

The above was a joke by the way.

Stow your twitchy palm (We really do need to finish that particular conversation)

I will be ready first thing in the morning.

Until then,

 **Anastasia Steele**

 **Maddening Girl**

* * *

Throwing down the phone with a Cheshire smile across her face, she heaved herself up to make some tea. She had nothing to do and all day to do it. A book lay on the sofa, ready for her to curl up with it. It had been a long time since she'd had the inner peace to simply be by herself with nothing but her imagination to keep her company. As the kettle boiled, a knock suddenly sounded at the door. Setting down the milk and hoping it wasn't the creep from upstairs asking to use her bathroom _again,_ she crossed the apartment. Such was its shitty quality, there was no door peephole.

Telling herself she'd simply say her hot water was out and send him on his way, she opened the door.

Her mouth fell open like a stone as she stared at the very familiar, very handsome man.

Her voice rang with confusion.

"Elliot?"

…

TBC

…


	15. Chapter 15

"Ana, it's been a while."

She felt herself staring. Of the two Grey brothers, Elliot had always been downright puppy-like compared to his reserved, brooding sibling. His voice was usually full of bounce, his eyes full of mirth. But as she laid her own eyes on him for the first time in six years, none of those characteristics seemed to have survived their parting day. His tone was cool, his gaze downright chilly. He had aged as well, and as pleasingly as Christian had, but he still retained an aura of boyish youth as he stood frostily in the doorway. How the hell did he know where she lived? What the hell was he doing here? And why the hell was he so _un-Elliot_ like?

She swallowed.

"Would you like to come in?"

He nodded brusquely. Elliot never did brusque. As she stepped aside to let him in, Ana shivered.

He felt like a completely different person.

Before she could point to the sofa and invite him to sit down as a precursor to fetching him a drink, he had rounded on her as she closed the door softly. In the brightness of her apartment he looked even more aloof, even colder. She felt her brow knit together. Christian's family had truly never entered her mind since they had rekindled their fledgling relationship. To have his brother turn up on her doorstep, the night before her return to Seattle, was unprecedented.

And, by all apparent signs, unpleasant.

"Ana, I don't have long. I'm flying out to Paris to see Mia in a couple of hours. I stopped by here first because I needed to speak to you." His eyes took in the moving boxes littered around the room and a delicate sneer played about his lips. Turning back to her, he took in a deep breath and launched into a speech that she could instantly tell had been pre-planned and well-rehearsed.

"I have no doubt in my mind that my brother, in keeping with his trait to put your feelings above all else, has been a little economical with some facts. But I'm not him and I think you need to hear them. When you left him six years ago, you broke him. You destroyed him. We knew him from a child that was deeply scarred from an abusive home, and he was more broken by you than he was as a four-year -old boy left alone with the corpse of his mother. You never called, you never wrote, you never made a singular effort to reach out and see how he was."

His eyes hardened as her heart dropped several inches.

"Our mother had to take a leave of absence from work. She was terrified he was going to harm himself. He cut us off. He cut us all off, even Mia. He's always loved Mia the most. And he cut her off just as much as he did me and our parents. Refused to speak to any of us. Worked himself into the ground, spending night and day locked up in that fucking office of his. He made rash and foolish business decisions, lost more money in a single day than you've earned in your entire life, nearly pulled the plug on a perfectly decent investment that would have led to the loss of hundreds of jobs."

He stared at her in such a way that even though he and Christian weren't related by blood, reminded her forcibly and unpleasantly of him.

"He was crazed," he continued in a venomous murmur. "He wasn't himself. For months and months after you left, he was like a different Christian. Several of his long-term and most valued employees left him. Couldn't stomach his mood swings and terrible temper for another minute. Eventually, he plateaued out. Stopped making rash decisions, stopped suffering from swinging mood cycles. But he wasn't the same. He was colder and more distant than ever before. He would visit only when courtesy dictated he couldn't put it off any longer, and bolt as soon as he possibly could thereafter. He never brought another girl home. He's never been seen with another girl. He worked and he went home, then he worked and he went home. He's in his early thirties and it's like he's pensionable inside."

He took another halting and deep breath as a spark of pure venom pooled into his eyes.

"I know he begged you to come back," he continued in a near whisper. "I know he begged and he begged, called and called. Wrote and wrote. And you never answered a single one. Never gave him the time of day. Couldn't be bothered to pick up the phone. Whatever happened between you is between you, but how you handled the break-up, that's between all of us. Because you nearly fucking obliterated my brother Ana. And just when I think he's surely forgotten all about you, I get a text the other day that was so _happy_ I'm sure I've read the sender's name wrong."

He glared at her accusingly as sweat began to pop at her temples.

"But I hadn't read the name wrong. It was from Christian. We all got the same one. All about how _happy_ he was to finally have you back in his life, how you two were giving it another go. How you were relocating back to Seattle to be closer to him. How fucking joyous the whole situation was."

He pinched the bridge of his nose in another Christian-like gesture and breathed deeply.

"My mother is inconsolable. My father isn't saying a word on the subject. Mia is spitting fire. Even the fucking gardener has an opinion on the return of the prodigal Miss Steele. Well, let me tell you something for nothing, there will be no wide-armed welcome back. You're not welcome in our family, Ana. You're going to break him again and when you do, we're not sure he can come back from it. Not a second time. Not when he barely made it the first-time round. So that brings me to why I'm here. Why I've stopped by."

The room temperature seemed to drop several degrees as he eyed her silently.

"If you ever cared for my brother in the way you claim you did, then leave him now. Don't drag him in any deeper than you already have, just so you can pull the rug from under his feet later down the line. He's a strange guy, a hard guy to know, I'm not oblivious to that fact. But he is a good fucking man Ana, and I can't and won't stand idly by whilst you tear him apart when the going gets too tough for you to bear. So, for everyone's sake, do the right thing. Do the right thing that you couldn't do the last time. Think of something and someone more than yourself. Think of him and let him go. He will eventually find someone else, someone who can cope with him. We both know that person isn't you. Don't delude yourself or him any longer. Call it a day. Unpack these boxes and carry on your life here, in New York. There's nothing and no-one in Seattle for you."

He stared impassively as her mouth dropped open and tears pooled into her eyes.

"I have to go now. I hope for everyone's sake that I do not see you in Seattle, that I do not see you hanging on my brother's arm. You will find someone else more suited to you and he will find someone more suited to him. The only variable is how much pain you can cause him in the interim. Like I said, if you cared about it at all, you'll put an end to this delusion now. Right now. You will not tell him I stopped by, you won't tell him about this conversation. Let him keep some dignity. Let him escape with as much of himself intact as possible."

He eyed her closely, something shifting in his eyes, before speaking almost gently.

"Let him go, Anastasia."

With that, he strode across the room and reached the door in the space of her blink. Time seemed to hover in a suspended state. Her heart was beating wildly, yet her oxygen intake was suffering. She couldn't breathe. She couldn't think. She couldn't feel. The creaking sound of the door knob being turned snapped her out of her trance and she pivoted, pale and clammy, to face him. Her voice was a croaking interpretation of the happy beat that shone in her online conversation with Christian, mere moments ago.

"Tell me one thing."

He nodded slowly, his hand never leaving the door knob.

"Did Elena Lincoln send you? Tell you to do this?"

The raw confusion that splashed over his handsome face was pure and entirely free from artifice. Her heart sunk impossibly low as she predicted the words that came out of his mouth.

"Elena? No, she didn't send me. I haven't seen or thought of her in years. Why would I? Why would she?"

When it became clear that she wasn't going to answer, he sighed and opened the door. His parting comments were too late to hurt her, the pain she was already suffering was as much as her brain could interpret and distribute around her entire being.

"If you have any love for my family, this is goodbye Ana. I wish you well. I truly do. Just not with Christian. I think you know that some things, no matter how much we want them, are never meant to be."

As the door closed quietly shut, the tears that had pooled in her eyes broke free from their watery prison and cascaded down her pale cheeks.

As she slumped down on the sofa, her tears turned to racking sobs.

One question and one question alone burned into her alert and sub-conscious.

 _What if they really were never meant to be?_

….

TBC

…


	16. Chapter 16

For the first time ever, she was grateful for his insistence on her having the latest technology. Firing up the mean machine with tears still pouring down her cheeks, the need to hear his voice was all-consuming. Elliot's warning to not tell him about their conversation was not one she was about to heed. Secrets and shitty communication were the reason she had spent the last six years without him. She wasn't about to repeat the mistakes of her past the day before her future was set to begin. The video chat tone droned on and on as she waited impatiently for him to pick up. When he did, the mere sight of him in all his beautiful, suited glory sent her tears streaming faster and hotter.

His eyes grew wide, his voice was urgent.

"Anastasia? What's happened? What's the matter?"

Slumping further down on the sofa, the mac firmly on her lap, she drew a shuddering breath.

"Why didn't you tell me that your whole family hates me?"

The crease of his brow was as sharp as ever. He said nothing for the longest moment, his eyes boring into hers, his warming presence thousands of miles away. His voice when he spoke for the second time was just as urgent, but she detected notes of underlying wariness and resignation. He tensed visibly, as if expecting some sort of bad news. Her heart raced at the truth of Elliot's words winning out over Christian's reflexes.

"Why do you think that my whole family hates you?"

She clutched her hair in frustration and dried away her tears in delayed anger.

"Because I've just had your fucking brother at my door, telling me about how he, your parents and your sister all despise me. How I ruined you when I left. How they had to stand by and watch you self-destructed for months and months. How you nearly blew apart your business, how your most important employees left you. How you cut your family off. How you became cold and distant, only visiting with them when you absolutely had to. How all of the above is all my fault."

He stared at her in complete and deafening silence for an interminable moment.

"Elliot was just at your place?" he asked in an oddly calm voice, "Is that what you're telling me?"

She gritted her teeth.

" _Yes,_ that is what I am telling you. I am also asking you how you could even think about letting me come back to Seattle being completely oblivious to the fact that your entire family hates me? Didn't you think that was something I should know about? Were you going to tell me when we arrived for dinner and the main course listed on the menu was my head?"

He pinched the bridge of his nose and felt an impossible anger boil inside him.

His voice was choked when he composed himself enough to speak.

"Anastasia. I'm going to need you to excuse me for just a few moments. I will call you right back."

She glared.

"Christian, don't you dare. We need to talk about-"

"In a moment, Anastasia."

The screen went blank and she stared at her own tear-stained reflection for several moments before a blood-curdling scream of frustration tore from her throat. With very minimal self-restraint, she managed _not_ to hurl the mean machine at the wall but rather lay down on the sofa and stare up at the ceiling in sheer and utter exhaustion. Time was a forgiving healer and she had nearly forgotten how intense and all-consuming being with Christian was. Fatigue gripped her. Looking around at her boxed-up life, she closed her eyes and turned into the sofa cushions, too tired to think one more single thought.

In his glass panelled office, Christian was having a hard time controlling himself.

The urge to throw something through the window was burningly powerful.

The dial tone seemed to stretch on for an eternity before it connected.

"Elliot."

"You have exactly three seconds to explain to me just what the fuck you were doing at Anastasia's apartment before I hunt you down and tear your good-for-nothing head clean off of your fucking shoulders. Who the _hell_ do you think you are? What the _hell_ do you think you were doing?"

The silence on the other end was, to his brother's credit, reasonably short.

"I should've known she wouldn't do the right thing."

The answer on the other hand, was definitely not the right one.

Christian's teeth ground together.

"I beg your pardon?" he murmured in a voice that dripped venom. "What did you just say to me?"

"Listen. I know my turning up at her apartment mightn't have been the coolest thing to do. But I'm sorry Christian, I'm not going to sit back and watch as that bitch comes back into your life and fucks it three ways from Sunday. She absolutely destroyed you the last time. What makes you think this time is going to be any different? Mom and dad think the exact same thing, so does Mia. It's not just me that has a problem with the two of you getting back together. When are you going to see that she is no good for you? You're Christian Grey. You could have any girl you wanted. Why do you continue to want the one girl that is toxic for you?"

The audacity seemed to burn his skin the more and more he listened to it.

He couldn't speak. Stricken dumb was he with indignation. Time shimmered in a suspended state in front of him. Anger sizzled inside him. The thoughts of Anastasia's face as she stood accosted and surprised in her own home, with his own brother's vitriol hurled at her, consumed him. Were they all talking about him behind his back? His own parents, his sister? He had sent them that text sure in the thought that they would be happy for them. Mia was with Pierre, her latest French conquest. Elliot was flitting between model after model and his mother and father's marriage was happier than ever. Was he not supposed to have a share in any of that? Did they _want_ him alone and miserable?

His tongue unstuck and his rage flowed freely.

"You arrogant bastard," he nearly screamed into the receiver. "How _dare_ you fuck around in my life like this? You think it's ok for you to screw every blonde that falls on your dick, but I have to spend my life alone? Since when do I live my life on your terms? You think it makes you a big man to go and terrorise a woman in her own apartment? Unannounced and uninvited? That's what a privileged upbringing buys? An overgrown, meddling little prick?"

Elliot sighed.

Christian snarled.

"You don't understand what you were like," the elder of the Grey brothers murmured, "You don't understand what it was like to watch you disintegrate. You're a tough guy to accept brother, but she tore you into a thousand pieces. You weren't eating, you weren't sleeping, you weren't talking. You didn't care that you had mom in tears every other night, that dad was an anxious wreck, that Mia couldn't even bear the sound of Anastasia's name. You didn't care that I called and called, and you never picked up. You didn't care about anyone or anything other than her and all that goes with her. You can't just write the family that saved your life off for the girl who broke your heart. It doesn't work like that. When Kate left me, I didn't pretend that I didn't have a family. Why should you?"

A pregnant silence ensued.

Each brother was processing their own sense of righteousness.

Christian broke the pause.

"However badly I behaved is no excuse to throw your weight around with Anastasia," he countered quietly, his anger acting oddly as a calming balm. "Perhaps I owe you all an apology for cutting you off. That as it may be, what happened between Anastasia and I, is between us. You all blaming her is utterly ridiculous. The break-up was my fault. I'm to blame. Not her. Her reaction to the break-up is also my fault, I'm to blame. But none of that is any of your business. I don't go around demanding to know the intimate details of your life, or Mia's, or mom and dad's. I would appreciate the same basic fucking courtesy being returned. It's not rocket science. Even someone with your intelligence can understand this. Keep the hell out of my life, Elliot. And don't you _ever_ speak to Anastasia without her initiating the conversation again. Or I will happily break your jaw."

Elliot digested this slowly.

"You're willing to risk everything you have for this girl? Again?"

Christian didn't miss a beat.

"I am. Without doubt or question. Or the need for explanation."

"So what happens when she-"

"This is my last word on the matter," Christian interrupted icily, "So go ahead and put on your grown-up pants and listen closely Elliot. Anastasia and I are back together. She is moving back to Seattle. We are going to give things another go. I neither want nor need yours or the family's approval or permission. My life is my life. Her life is her life. You all need to back the fuck off. If you will not or cannot accept Anastasia as being a part of my life, then you're not going to have me in your life. It's a package deal. Take it or leave it. I am not going to have her treated like a pariah or a visitor that's overstayed their welcome. She is my girlfriend, my partner. You will either treat her with the respect that she deserves, or you can all scratch me off your Christmas card list. And if I find out that you've accosted or upset her ever again, Elliot, I will smash your pretty little face apart. First and final warning.

"Jesus Christ. Christian, you've lost your-"

"Goodbye, Elliot. Give my love and warning to the family."

The line went dead.

Back in New York, the mean machine shrilled with an incoming video call.

Ana eyed it warily before clicking the connect button and pushing her lank fringe from her eyes. The sight of him, smiling and relaxed, set her frayed nerves at ease despite herself. Christian had a way of making you feel how he felt. And if he felt confident and relaxed, she felt confident and relaxed. He tilted his head to the side with an apologetic grin and cleared his throat.

"Hey, baby."

She tried to glower.

"Don't you _hey baby_ me, Christian Grey."

He grinned an even wider grin of repentance.

"I dealt with my brotherly issues. I assure you such a problem will never happen again."

She raised a speculative brow and sighed.

"So your whole family loves me now, is that it?"

He bit his lip and his face took on a bright yet serious hue. A silence stretched out as he plucked up the courage and steeled himself for the rare openness he was about to exhibit. She watched him closely, intrigued by the inner-conflict that seemed to be warring inside of him. Just as she was about to repeat the question, he answered it in the most spectacular Christian Grey style that had her insides melting like a water based popsicle on a blistering summers day.

"Maybe not, Miss Steele. But they have been illuminated as to a most important piece of information that I am sure, with time, will be all they care about."

She frowned in confusion.

"What important piece of information is that?"

He exuded a sense of vulnerability that made her wish apparition was an actual thing.

"That even though they might not love you right now, I do."

Her eyes bulged from their sockets.

"What did you just say?" she whispered. "Repeat that to me, slowly."

He rolled his eyes in a way that set a fire within her and enunciated with a humorously clear diction.

"I, Christian Grey, hereby profess and declare that you, Miss Steele, have my love."

He hesitated.

"That is," he murmured, "If you want it?"

She felt a beam that would rival the sun's strongest ray cross her face as the last six years of misery were wiped clean and clear from her conscious being. Her voice had a breathless quality that she would have hated in the normal course of things, but in that moment, she didn't even hear it.

"I, Anastasia Steele, hereby profess and declare that you, Christian Grey, hold the only love I'll ever need."

…

TBC

…..


	17. Chapter 17

"It is customary for you, a lady, to allow me, a gentleman, to carry you over the threshold."

She rolled her eyes. His gleamed at the connotations.

"I'm pretty sure that's only for newlyweds upon entering _their_ home. We are not newlyweds and this is not _our_ home." She smirked. "And you, Christian Grey, are many varied and wonderful things. But you are no gentleman. Quite the opposite as a matter of fact."

He pouted and smirked at the same time, as only he could.

"You should think about a career in law, with nit-picking skills like those, Miss Steele."

"I'm merely thinking of your back, Mr Grey, you are, shall we say, unused to a man's manual work."

He stared in exaggerated shock, taking a step closer to her, filling her personal space with his light scent and unbearably endearing grin.

"Are you implying that I am not a _manly_ man, is that it?"

She placed a gentle hand on his chest and raised a brow.

"I'm just saying that, of the two of us, you have the better manicure. Take from that what you will."

He shook his head at her impertinence, grinning like a fucking moron at the warm sensation that blossomed through him. The sense of relaxation, of unadulterated ease and carefree companionability he felt with her still amazed him. If any woman before her had even thought to say such a thing to him, not that they would, anger would have branded him like a molten poker. Coming from her mouth, he was merely amused, albeit dryly. He pointed to the open threshold of the apartment they had _finally_ agreed on, and tried to adopt a stern look. He failed.

"It's time to bring yourself and your smart mouth into that apartment before my palms start twitching."

She bit her lip. Slowly. And deliberately as all hell.

"We never did finish that conversation you know, we never agreed upon an agreement."

He shook his head in growing amusement. The kind of humour that made him look and act his age.

"And you think that the public corridor of your new apartment building is the place to have it?"

She ran her slender fingers over the collar of his pale blue shirt and smiled shyly, still unused to his realness, his softness, his _there-ness._

"No. But I do think the private bedroom of my new apartment is the place to have it."

His lips parted somewhat, heavy with want. Before she could fight him, he bent down and scooped her into his arms, bearing her weight like a feather. Laughing softly as she beat his chest with fists that would do him no harm, he crossed the threshold and kicked the door shut behind him with her nuzzling into his collar. Her arms were loosely flung around his neck as he made the way through an apartment filled with a myriad of moving boxes and wrapped furniture.

He deposited her with a small squeal on the plastic covered mattress of the king-sized bed.

She was a different Anastasia as he gazed hungrily down upon her.

Gone was her lank hair and gaunt face. In its place was a brown mane of slinky shine and a slender face currently alight with lust. She was still far too thin, but he would work on that. But the look that she looked up at him with was the old Anastasia. The one who had softened him, the one who had tamed him. The one who terrified and thrilled him in equal measure. In soft blue jeans and a plain white t-shirt that cupped her pert breasts just right, she looked as good as she would in a designer gown. His mouth watered.

Leaning over her, his grey eyes smoked with pleasure as he made to kiss her slowly and softly.

Pushing him away with a gentle hand, she answered his frowning question.

"I'm not in the mood for vanilla. We need to finish our discussion and then I think I'll opt for a different flavour. It's been vanilla since New York, and whilst your vanilla is very, _very_ delicious, it's good to change things up now and again. Changing flavours is good for the palette."

His momentary panic flatlined and a teasing, hopeful smile pulled at his lips.

"And what kind of flavour might madam require?"

She bit her lip with as much deliberate finesse as possible. He instantly hardened.

"Kinky fuckery. With cream and cherries on top."

A soft groan pushed at his lips. She was right. Since they'd rekindled, their sex life had been extremely tame. Utterly enjoyable, but tame nonetheless. He was deliberately restrained, fearful of pushing her away by letting his repressed sexual deviances come out to play. But that didn't change the fact that he had longed to tie her to the bed when he had instead gently lowered her upon it. That didn't change the fact that he had longed to spank her crimson when he had instead softly caressed her supple, creamy ass cheeks. That didn't change the fact that he had longed to run a leather riding crop in between her firm breasts when he had instead carded a gentle upon them.

That didn't change the fact that although she was now offering it, he wasn't sure.

"Really? You think you're ready for that, because I-"

"It is wholly impolite to refuse a woman's advances after you've carried her over the threshold. You're many things, but you're flawlessly polite. I know what I want. You're not going to scare me away. You're not going to bring on a full-blown bout of regression or repressed trauma. This is me, telling you, that I want you to fuck me three ways from Sunday. Like you used to do. I want you to tie me to this bed and put that tongue of yours to a much better use. Just like the first time in Escala." She eyed him closely, sincerity bubbling in the blue spheres.

"I want, in short, for you to switch from Christian Grey to Mr Grey."

His mouth swung open. But she pipped him to the post.

"And I want us to finish that discussion about your twitchy palms. And after we've finished that conversation, I want you to put those twitchy palms to good use."

If dying and going to heaven was anything like this, death was ok as an imminent prospect.

"Very well, Miss Steele," he said smoothly, sitting down on the bed beside her, their knees touching. "Let's get this conversation done and dusted so I can go ahead and put my tongue to better use, as _ordered_ by an unusually demanding little writer I know."

She glanced coyly down at his bulging erection and raised a brow.

"I don't go calling _him_ little now, do I?"

He grinned. A breathtaking grin. The one that lifted every single shadow from his face.

"Well we both know you'd be lying if you did. Because he's-"

"But yes," she interrupted deliberately, "We do need to get that conversation done and dusted so you can go ahead and put that tongue to better use as ordered by the _only_ relevant writer you know. So," she indicated his currently inoffensive hands, "Why don't you go ahead and get us started. We both know how you like to…direct the flow of dialect."

His eyes danced at the inference.

"That I do, Miss Steele," he murmured, "But this time I must confess myself stumped. You're generally a direct woman, but with this issue, you tend to give off _very_ mixed messages. I need to know in excruciating detail what is and what isn't ok with you if we're going to introduce elements of kinky fuckery into the vanilla pot. I won't risk losing you by overstepping my and our boundaries ever again. I just won't, Anastasia, I simply could not and will not risk going through that again."

She glanced to the side, acknowledging her role in the incident that had torn them apart.

"Your hands don't scare me," she practically whispered, "All the other things in your play room, they freaked me out. But I wanted to please you, I wanted to be the woman you wanted, I didn't want to lose you. So, I thought I could make myself want what you wanted. I thought if I could just see how bad things could get, I could gauge everything else. Deal with it all. Learn to like it, love it even. But I bit off more than I could chew, and I ran away before we could deal with the ensuing choking session."

She glanced down at her knees.

"No pun intended."

He chuckled, reaching out a broad hand to clasp over her slender counterpart.

"Allow me to summarise, ok? You can agree or disagree with said summation upon completion. You like spanking or you're beginning to like it, it doesn't scare you because it comes from my hands. From me. Implements scare you, because they're not me. They're impersonal. Pain terrifies you, but the pleasure you get from it scares you even more because you don't know how to feel about it. It should repulse you, but it doesn't. From my hands, at least. You like my bossiness, and you hate it. You like to be controlled, and you hate to be controlled. It's all about striking the balance. Belt-gate happened before we could do that, that's all."

She looked to the side, slightly amazed by his intuitive observations, before a peal of laughter escaped her.

His eyes narrowed.

"Palms are twitching _now_ Miss Steele, it's utterly impolite to laugh at a man at his most vulnerable."

"I'm sorry," she spluttered, "But _belt-gate?_ Are you twelve?"

A grin slowly spread across his face as a small sigh escaped him.

"You are as impossible as ever," he noted dryly, "An endearing trait, to an extent."

"Are you saying I push you the edge of your extent?"

"I'm saying you push me over the edge of my extent."

They stared at each other for a moment, grey eyes on blue, silence ringing in the background. She licked her dry lips and spoke into the silence, shattering it into confetti like wisps of a new-found accord, to be tried and tested.

"How about we forget the past and focus on the future. Blend you with me as best we can, and me with you. We keep the vanilla, add in touches of kinky fuckery over time until we get to a place where we're both satisfied. The first dash of kinky fuckery can be spanking, and we can build on that slowly but surely moving on. I promise to put down the brakes at the point where I feel I'm in over my head. There need never be another _belt-gate_ because I'll open my mouth and talk, instead of just picking up and running. I don't want a contractual list of rules and punishments, but…I think I can get behind one or two… _reasonable_ boundaries and resulting twitchy palms upon any possible infringement. The nature of which we can decide another day. Soon."

His eyes popped open. Almost like a kid unwrapping a totally unexpected gift at Christmas.

"Really?"

She smiled somewhat shyly, realising that she really meant what she said.

"Really."

Tilting her head to the side, her eyes shone with an emotion he very much recognised.

"Twitchy palms are also very much authorised for rest and recreation, too."

His deep chuckle washed over her like a pleasant flow of spring water.

"They're not famed for providing much in the way of rest, but we do aim to please, Miss Steele. I will endeavour to incorporate an ethos of rest period into my manicured hands."

She snorted with laughter, recalling her previous jibe.

"Don't deny it Grey, no man has nails that perfect without artificial help."

"I think I'm going to start putting my tongue to good use now, before _yours_ gets you into trouble."

She leant back on the pillow-less bed and arched a brow.

"I thought I'd be as old as you are before you came to that realisation."

He shook his head with a wide grin breaking across his face. Her wit and her cheek were refreshing. No one challenged him like she did, and no one wanted to. The idea of blending their two worlds together to a point where both of them were as happy as possible was more appealing than he could verbalise. As she stretched backwards and the fabric of her t-shirt strained against her full breasts, he let out a soft moan and turned his mental acuity the hell off.

They'd had their mental stimulation.

Now it was time for their physical stimulation.

His lips were pleasingly cold and smooth on her awaiting hot and parted mouth. His eyes fluttered shut as pleasure stormed him, his hands reaching to not-so-gently yank her t-shirt up and over her head, expertly removing her bra with a one-handed move, spilling her milky breasts out with a bounce that made him shudder. His hair was pulled into a tight hold as she drew him down further to her, moaning as his warm torso rubbed against her bared breasts. It was just as her hands, careful not to brush off his scars, moved down his torso to reach his jeans zipper that the hairs on the back of his neck stood up.

And not in a good way.

Instinctively, he pressed his body over Ana's as he twisted violently and suddenly around, but it was too late.

Neither of them had heard the apartment door open.

….

TBC

….


	18. Chapter 18

_"Kate?"_

Anastasia's voice rang with shock as she scrambled upwards on the bed. Christian gracefully swung himself off of her and sat against the headboard with a resigned look of surprise and anger tautening his features. Now this his protective instincts were no longer necessary, he was free to glare broodingly and confusedly. He hadn't seen the antagonistic Miss Kavanagh since the day she had stormed from the family home in the midst of an entrée based argument with his brother. He had sustained a two-hour session of snarky jibes and stony looks before her hasty departure, the realities of he and Anastasia's break-up unknown to the loyal best friend, but seemingly her business nonetheless.

The years had been kind to her.

Glancing between she and Anastasia, a jolt of realisation hit him.

He and Kate weren't the only ones who hadn't seen in each other in a long, long time.

"What the hell are you doing here?" Ana hissed, the vehemence in her tone surprising even Christian whose gaze flickered to her in unanswered question. She didn't spare him a returning glance as she glared at the girl who had once been attached to her hip with darkening brown eyes.

"How did you get this address? How _dare_ you just turn up here, moreover, what the fuck do you think you're _doing_ barging your way in here? Unannounced and most certainly uninvited?" She threw the blonde a filthy look containing such bile that it sent Christian's brows shooting for the sky. "Wait, why am I even asking, you've always been an entitled little brat, haven't you? The world just has to throw down the gauntlet wherever the wonderful Katherine Agnes Kavanagh happens to stomp her new Jimmy Choo stilettos, right?"

True to her confident and sure form, Kate didn't blink an eye at the uncharacteristic Steele tirade.

"Ana. It's been a while."

Instinctively, Christian threw out a gentle arm as Anastasia emitted a semi-strangled screech of anger and stirred aggressively. He felt her chest rise and fall with contractions of rage and wondered briefly who would win should a cat-fight ensue. Not that he would allow it to get that far, but still…a small smile of pride flickered across his face. He'd be willing to bet that his Anastasia would be able to hold her own. She was a spitfire, and clearly, there was fodder between the two feuding friends to fuel any attempt at physicality.

"Wow. I'm surprised mommy and daddy had to buy you a degree with brainpower like that."

Smiling at the jibe, grudgingly impressing Christian in the process, Kate took a deep breath.

"In answer to your question, I got this address from Elliot," she said clearly and unapologetically, ignoring with ease Christian's snarl of anger. "And in answer to your other question, the what am I doing here one?" Her gaze roved over the glaring millionaire with distaste. "I'm here to save you from making the biggest mistake of your life. Again."

Before Ana could drag her jaw up from the plastic-wrapped mattress, Kate continued.

"Our friendship got burned once before because of the depraved creature sitting beside you on that bed, Ana. I tried to help you through the breakup, and you were having none of it. Wouldn't have a word said against _him,_ refused to listen to reason. Practically descended into a physical brawl with me when I did the right thing in stopping you from drunk dialling him every night for a month after you found the sense to leave his ass. And that all may have blown up and cost me you, but I was ok with that, because at least you were free from _him,_ but now you're apparently thinking of going back to square one, I can't stand idly by. I just can't. You may hate me and you mightn't consider me a friend, but I still love you and I still consider you my best friend."

She threw a glacial gaze over a silently and darkly staring Christian.

"And friends don't let friends date sadistic, satanic pieces of sexually abusive _filth."_

He tilted his head to the side as if considering this description with an almost academic thoughtfulness.

He said nothing, considering it be reasonably accurate, terribly shameful, requiring no rebuttal.

Kate held out a hand.

"Come with me, Ana. Come with me now and don't make the same mistake twice. This bastard nearly ruined your life once before, you're older now, smarter. Smart girls stay away from pieces of work like him. Trust me, both of us are well shot of the Grey brothers. Nothing but misery and trouble. One _considerably_ more so than the other. Elliot, to his credit, has basic human compassion and empathy, not to mention respect for women and their bodily safety." Her eyes flashed. "I've _seen_ it, Ana. His disgusting, debasing room of medieval torture. At Escala. Elliot and I stayed there one night when this parasite was away on business, got a little drunk, got a little curious. And it's a good thing, too. No wonder you ran. He _abused_ you, didn't he? Humiliated you? Beat you? All under the guise of the charming and charismatic CEO _Christian Grey."_

Her eyes brimmed with disgust as his widened in a mixture of fear, betrayal and volatile rage.

She outstretched her outstretched hand even further.

"Don't let him dazzle you, Ana," she said quietly, "He's not the man for you. You know that. Deep down. I know I haven't been in touch for a long time, but I've missed you. I've missed you so much. I know the hold these people can wield. It took me long enough to realise my own mistake with his older, better counterpart. You let him in again and he'll hurt you, Ana, he'll hurt you so badly that we both know you won't come back from it. My parents have a villa in Italy now, it's empty. We could take the week, get your head on straight and get to know each other again."

She raised a perfectly manicured brow in an almost child-like hopefulness.

"What do you say?"

For the first time in a long, long time, Ana didn't think three steps ahead. Didn't analyse the possibilities and the probabilities. Didn't think and over think. She merely acted. Slipping from the bed, deliberately keeping her gaze away from Christian and focussing it solely on Kate, she walked with a grace that had eluded her until now. Kate smiled a smile of sheer relief as it seemed her long-lost best friend had come to her senses, and was coming back to her side.

The resounding slap across the porcelain face took them all by surprise.

"You listen to me and you listen closely," Ana whispered with a terrifyingly clear diction, staring into Kate's reddening face, oblivious to Christian's gawping gape of amazement behind her back. "You will never contact me again. You will never bother me again. You will never contact Christian again. You will never bother him again. You and I are as done as we ever were. We are not friends, we are not acquaintances, we are not two people who would smile at each other on the subway. We are two people who are _done_ as much as two people can be done."

She took another step closer to the stunned and staring Miss Kavanagh.

"You know nothing of he and I," she continued in a soft snarl. "You know nothing of so many things, but most of all, he and I. So you and Elliot and whoever else wants to keep us apart can go ahead and sink into the deepest, darkest depths of hell for all I care. Your opinions and your blessings are neither wanted or required around here. I used to think that you were the strong one, and I your weak little sidekick. But that's not the case, not now at least. I can operate and know my own mind, Kate, I don't need _you_ to whisper sweet nothings into my ear, telling me how to run my own life. Look at yours, and you'll know why."

Taking a step back, Ana's eyes were sparkling with something that was immune to categorisation.

"As far what you and Elliot saw in Christian's apartment, when you intruded upon his privacy, you would do well to erase it from your mind. Because if you don't, Kate, I'm going to be very upset. If I find that you've opened your big mouth to _anyone_ about what you saw in that room, I will ruin you. I know things about you that we both know you don't want to be public fodder. Don't want mommy and daddy dearest reading in page six over their morning orange juice. So, think about it. You try and hurt him and I bury you. It's quite simple, really. Even for you."

She took another step back and indicated the open doorway.

"You let yourself in, you can let yourself out."

Her gaze hardened.

"And _stay_ out."

The silence that spiralled was so heavy it seemed to claw its way into every nook and cranny in the sparse, modern rom. Kate placed a hand upon her stinging cheek and stared at her estranged friend as if she had never seen anything of her ilk before in her time on Earth. She shook her head, fighting back the tears of anger and humiliation, batting with an uneasy feeling of loss and fear. She glanced over at Christian who stared impassively back at her, his smouldering grey eyes the only indication he was feeling…anything. She spoke in a muted whisper, a shadow of her usual clipped tone.

"You're making the biggest-"

"Get the fuck out, Kate, and never come back."

With a last look that weighed heavier than any look ever should, the defeated Miss Kavanagh swallowed down a strangled sob and turned on her heel. The sound of the outer apartment door banging shut was like gunfire that broke the time-suspended state of the moment. Blinking as the adrenaline drained from her body, Anastasia turned to Christian with an inability to verbalise her emotions into any form of reasonable communication.

He rose from the bed in one fluid moment, staring at her like her had never seen her before.

Cupping her chin into his broad hands, his gaze was almost indecent upon her. It burned her. She couldn't look away, couldn't blink, couldn't breathe. His thumb roved over her defined jaw, a new sense of vulnerability scorching every line and crevice of his beautiful face. They stood like that, for a split second of eternity, no words necessary.

Until they were.

"I think I just saw a wildly territorial side to you that I didn't know existed, Anastasia Steele."

Her shy smile shone in his eyes as he grinned crookedly down at her.

"And I fucking loved it. But maybe we should talk about what just happened, because-"

"Speaking of fucking, Christian, I think we were actually in the middle of some of that when we were so rudely interrupted by yet another ghost of our past. They're the most effective form of contraception out there. Enforced abstinence. Not much fun."

He chuckled, pressing his nose against hers, fishing around in his pocket.

The foil wrapper seemed to shiver with memories past.

"I really-"

"Hate those fucking things," she grinned in interruption, "I know. You repeat yourself a _lot."_

He raised a mocking brow.

"I'm an old man, Anastasia, we tend to repeat ourselves."

She nodded in grinning assent.

"With you being such an old man and all, are you sure you have it in you to christen that bed with Christian blessings? Or should we send you out for some Viagra? Because there's no shame in admitting you need help. Honestly, I don't mind if-"

He growled, and with one easy flex of his arms, she was splayed on the soft mattress with a squeak.

"You're going to pay dearly and repeatedly for that comment, Miss Steele."

She grinned at him coquettishly, arching her back and aching for his touch, safely back in their own bubble.

"I'm counting on it, Mr Grey."

…

TBC

….


	19. Chapter 19

He took his time in rolling up the sleeves of his powder blue shirt. His eyes never left her face. She was marked now. The prey in the hunt. He couldn't see enough of her, smell enough of her, feel enough of her. Her azure eyes seemed to darken with unbridled anticipation with every shifting inch of shirt fabric. They were back in their bubble now. The Christian and Ana terrain. An alternate dimension where light and dark could coexist in harmony and happiness. The Elena's, Elliot's and Kate's of the world didn't matter now.

It was just them. Only them.

He cocked his head with a coy smile, assessing her like a lion moving in for the kill. This amused her. She angled her head as well, dark hair spilling over her shoulders as she waited for him to make his move. Her heart was hammering pleasantly, her pulse thumping irregularly with lust. There was something about this moment when contrasted with all the moments they'd had in New York. This was their first fresh-start moment. Back in Seattle. Together. An almost dizzy sense of happiness rose up in her as he leaned one knee on the bed, still considering her with his smoky grey eyes.

"So, Anastasia, would you like to repeat those concerns you were having about my performance?"

She grinned up at him, utterly unabashed and nodded agreeably, a glint in her eyes.

"I'd be delighted to. I was worried about your declining stamina in the wake of your significant aging."

His titter of mirth was deep and musical. It wafted around the room in an achingly rare cloud of beauty. Happiness softened his features. Enhanced his classically handsome face. A moan of desire pulled at her lips as she watched his laugh. She wished he would laugh all day, every day. Playful Christian was the best Christian. He swung himself onto the bed gracefully. On his knees he inched closer to her, taking his sweet, sweet time. She lay impassively, waiting. She would wait for all eternity as long as she could stare into his face, his eyes, his soul. He lay his knees beside her knees, supported himself on hands beside her hands.

His clean breath breezed over her face as he hovered above her.

"That sort of spurious speculation hurts my feelings, Miss Steele, did you know that?"

She bit her lip. He was so close her could hear the whisper of tooth on skin. His eyes fluttered closed.

"I knew that. But I figured what with you being so old and all now, you'd have built a thicker skin."

His grin dazzled her. Like gazing at the night stars under a cloudless sky. He was that intense, that all-consuming, that ethereal. His broad thumb reached out to stroke her defined jaw. His touch was gentle but his gaze was a burning inferno of physical and psychological implosion. She didn't move, didn't blink, didn't breathe.

"I don't think we should be talking of thicker skins, Anastasia. For your benefit."

His gaze was unyielding as she stared upwards, speaking breathlessly.

"My benefit? Do explain, Mr Grey. I truly find your generation so fascinating. You're all so worldly. What with having lived through the Vietnam War and what have you."

His head hit his chest as his splutter of refined laughter echoed around the room.

"Oh Miss Steele. My palms are twitching. There is no order in this bedroom right now. No hierarchy."

She smirked.

"Is hierarchy your code word for erectile dysfunction? As in, nothing is high?"

His eyes widened. Copper hair spilled onto his forehead as he regarded her with an affection that no longer terrified him. Instinct was something he prided himself on. It was what had gotten him where he was in life and it had rarely, if ever, failed him. And so it was instinct that he went with, and it was instinct that rewarded them.

"Tut tut. I think I'm really going to have put my twitchy palms to use before your smart little mouth bites off more than it can chew. What do you think?"

Her attempt at a pout was so fucking adorable it nearly finished him off there and them.

"I think I can handle anything you or I can put in my mouth, Mr Grey."

His hands were her answer. Slipping down to the zipper of her jeans, they weren't gentle. Her faded favourites were unbuckled and yanked down with a force that startled and thrilled her. Inching down the bed he pooled them down to her ankles and divested her of them entirely. Slithering back up to her naval, his eyes smoked over into stormy clouds of grey as he slipped his fingers into the waistband of her black cotton panties. They ended up in the apartment hallway as he flipped her bodily onto her stomach, carefully rough as only he could be. Her squeak of surprise thrilled him, as it did her. Her creamy ass cheeks shivered up at him and he sprang up harder than an advanced petrophysics exam.

His hands roved over the supple and pert mounds with fervour.

"What do you think I should do with this ass of yours, Anastasia?"

He had to ask. Just to be safe. Instinct was his bread and butter, but she was his fillet mignon.

"Kiss it."

Her reply was tart, sardonic and so utterly her.

He grinned.

"Oh, I will. But first, I think it needs a different sort of attention. Do you agree?"

A second suspended in eternity passed as she stared into the plastic covered mattress.

"I agree to agreeably accede to your agreement on the matter, Mr Grey."

He rolled his eyes.

English lit majors.

They had their quirks. And he loved every single one of hers.

His hands kneaded her ass cheeks like an artisan sour dough loaf. It was a work of art, of that he was sure. She moaned as his deft fingers pressed down in all the right places, massaging her for what was to come. Her skin warmed under his hands. Not like how it was _going_ to warm under his hands, but a soft heat nonetheless. The first swat came out of nowhere. It was more effective and pleasing that way.

Her yelp of surprise mingled with pleasured pain was like the first fire of winter.

He closed his eyes to savour it, committing it to memory.

The second swat was a little harder and a little broader.

He intertwined a blow with a rub, a rub with a blow. She was still a virgin in this respect and pushing her boundaries was out of the question. Soon her moans were long and guttural as his hands provided a delicate mixture of sting and salve, salve and sting. He focussed on the lower regions of her tight ass, sending her dopamine levels sky high at the unusual stimuli. She writhed under his hands, this being the first time he had truly shown her how pleasurable the right kind of pain could be, in a way she felt safe with.

His hands were her safety blanket but there was no reason for that blanket to be beige, banal.

"Is it polite to accuse the love of your life of being old and unable to perform, Miss Steele?"

He punctuated the question with a series of biting swats and bountiful rubs.

"Well, I suppose it depends on the-"

One singularly stinging smack to her upper thighs had her gasping and reconsidering.

"No, I suppose on the whole that it's not, Mr Grey."

His grin was breathtaking. She could hear it. Her voice was playfully demure, oozing with pleasure. This wasn't the same Anastasia who overthought her first foray into a red ass. This wasn't the same girl who agonised over the morality of it all. This was a woman who knew how to let loose and allow the good things in life into hers.

Her ass was a glowing crimson.

Enough was enough.

With one last swinging slap, he turned her over onto her back in one fluid moment, her lungs expanding in one great _oh_ as she went. He towered over her bright pink cheeks, flushed with desire, and groaned at the masterpiece below him. Her eyes sparkled. She radiated gratification. There was no doubt in either of their minds that what had just occurred was something that would go on to blossom in their still blooming relationship.

He tilted his head once again and appraised her with twitching lips.

"Did madam learn her lesson?"

She inclined her head in a sarcastic display of submission and bit her lip.

"Thoroughly, Sir. Utterly and thoroughly."

Her slender hands wafted down to his zipper and deftly pulled it down.

"But I don't think my education is complete just yet. Do you?"

He wondered briefly if dying and going straight to the pearly gates of heaven would have anything on this moment. Because this was surely as good as good could fucking be. Allowing her to shimmy his own jeans over his slender hips, his outrageously expensive boxers pooling alongside them, he keened in desperate delectation as her warm, wet mouth cupped him with a passion that electrified his throbbing member. Peeking up at him through her unusually ochre eyes, framed with those outrageously thick, dark eyelashes, she knew who was really in control. He knew it too. And it thrilled him.

Releasing him for just a moment, she raised a defined brow.

"But I think you could do with a little refresher course in delayed gratification, do you agree?"

She held him in her hands, an atomic weapon to be either loaded or retired dependant on his answer.

He grinned down at her, a moon colliding on a collision course with the sun, and waved his surrender.

""I agree to agreeably accede to your agreement on the matter, Miss Steele."

…

TBC

…..


	20. Chapter 20

Diana and Michaela were worried. Really worried. Elena Lincoln was a secret giant in their world. The secret that everyone knew and knew to pretend they didn't. She operated in the shadows. She pulled the strings. Crafted skilled manipulations, climbing the social and economic ladders with every successful scheme. Displeasing her was not good for a girl's reputation. And a girl's reputation had to be stellar if Mrs Lincoln were to get them in the doors of men like Christian Grey and his ilk.

And right now, she was displeased.

She was displeased as all manner of hell.

"So, what you're telling me is that you couldn't find it within yourself to _lie_ Michaela, is that what you're saying? That your singular brain cell was so lonely that it couldn't squeeze out one original thought into your vapid little skull? He's a man for crying out loud. You couldn't flutter those lashes of yours and find his primitive paternal streak? Are you that _useless?"_

The clinking and clanking of the elite restaurant was oblivious to her soft tirade.

Michaela blanched, visibly trembled and glanced at Diana helplessly for support.

There was none.

"Elena, please, you have to understand. He dommed me. Out of nowhere. In a way he's never done before. I swear, I served him for longer than most girls and he was never that intense, never that powerful. I couldn't resist him. No one could. He wanted the truth and I had to give it to him. I felt that if I didn't, I'd choke on the deception. I'm telling you, with all due respect Elena, that the hold this Anastasia girl has over him is like nothing I've ever seen before. I don't think we're going to be able to crack it."

Diana didn't dare breathe as the cold glare of Elena's eyes iced over entirely.

"You listen to me and you listen closely," the scorned woman hissed, looking every bit the sophisticated businesswoman and socialite to the passing waitress, "What that little tramp has over Christian is nothing more than infatuation. He's never been infatuated before and the novelty is merely taking its time in blowing over. But it will. It _will_ blow over because we, ladies, are going to huff and puff until that insipid little girl and her crafty claws are out of his life for good."

She glared at the two of them, her recruited soldiers in a war laced in malice.

"Am I making myself plain to the two of you? Quite plain?"

There was no room for subjective consideration or personal preference. There was only one answer if either Diana or Michaela ever wanted to sub for someone who could treat them in the manner to which they were accustomed. Their heads bobbed up and down sycophantically, neither's level of intelligence their strong suit in life. They even spoke in tandem. Two simple girls with aspirations no bigger than the latest shoe trend.

"Yes Elena."

She smiled then. A broad, almost toad-like smile. Total subservience and deference. Just how she liked it. In truth, she had never really expected the pregnancy trap to work. It was merely an attempt to gauge the strength of the bond she was going to break. It was fiercer than she thought. But if there was something she always rose to, it was a challenge. And being scorned by the man she had raised up from the dredges of society to hold prime place as Seattle's most eligible, albeit temporarily ensnared, bachelor was plenty motivation.

It was the time honoured adage of the spiteful.

If she couldn't have him, no one could.

"This is merely a blip on the radar," she continued softly, her bright blonde hair an odd contrast to her darkened soul, "We must simply reconvene and redouble our efforts. And thankfully, I was born with the foresight to always think three steps ahead and then five steps after the fact. I always knew this day could come. I just didn't know the trail of destruction Christian would leave in his path. That much has, I regret to admit, taken me by surprise."

She reached out across the table and gripped both girls' hands in her cold claws.

"What he's done to me, I could get over. I'm strong. But what he's done to you girls. _My_ girls. I cannot simply get over that. You know how much I care for you ladies. You understand why I cannot allow you to be treated like this? Because if I did, what would the other girls think? How would they trust me to match them with fine, upstanding young men that were capable and deserving of meeting their needs? I thought Christian was one of those men. I confess myself mistaken. He is not who I thought he was. And I must correct the situation at all costs. You appreciate that, don't you girls?"

Mindless nods were instantly offered. Diana and Michaela were born to serve.

Privately abhorring their utter lack of brain power, Elena smiled gracefully.

"The foresight I was talking about is not going to be an easy thing for either of you ladies to do. I know that and I know I'm asking a lot of you. But you must keep in mind how he hurt you, how he demeaned you and how he threw you to the curb after all you gave him. Just like he did to me. You have to remember how you felt when he tore up your contracts and threw you out like yesterdays trash. You're going to need that strength to do what needs to be done."

Her crimson nails curled around each young girl's hands and she squeezed gently.

"The videos I had you both shoot of your first visit to Christian's penthouse, you still have the original copies? Contact lens cameras are good to a degree, but the quality of duplicate footage deteriorates quite drastically. For our needs, we are going to need the highest degree of clarity possible."

Diana and Michaela paled instantaneously and simultaneously.

Diana, being the slightly more astute of the two, recovered first. With stuttering and spluttering speech, she ogled the older woman from across the linen tablecloth with real and justified fear bubbling in her wide eyes.

"Elena, please, you can't be serious? For a start, we both have ironclad NDA's."

Mrs Lincoln relished the moment that she rustled imperiously around in her Gucci handbag. Whilst the girls watched with bated breath, sneaking looks of sheer incredulity and horror at the other, she extracted a thick and legal looking file and held it aloft. Like a prize-winning champion clutching a medal in her very own and exceedingly twisted Olympic games. Their gaze fixated upon it and Elena's eyes sparkled with a backbiting animus.

"No ladies, you just _think_ you have ironclad NDA's."

….

TBC

…


	21. Chapter 21

Taylor stared in mounting exasperation. He'd worked for Mr Grey long enough to have become accustomed to the stream of beautiful women who flooded in and out of the penthouse. But upon the return of Miss Steele, whom he'd always harboured a soft spot for, the line of Grey-bitten women had dried up crustier than the Sahara. But this woman, whom he vaguely remembered, wasn't about to take no for an answer. She was borderline hysterical, jabbering on about some kind of tape and demanding to be shown up to where Mr Grey and Miss Steele were sitting down to lunch. Just as he was resigning himself to using gentle force to remove her, her words struck a chord.

"If you do not let me see him Taylor, Elena Lincoln is going to _destroy_ him."

Jason hesitated. Very few people knew of Mr Grey's and Mrs Lincoln's past. Even he had only a surmised view of matters past. He swallowed uncertainly. He was under strict orders not to disturb. Mr Grey didn't take kindly to defiance of orders, especially where they concerned Miss Steele. But the look in Diana's wild brown eyes held a certain degree of sincerity and it wasn't for herself. Hoping he wasn't making a mistake, he sighed and called up to the penthouse.

"What?"

Christian's voice was tense and snappy.

He really did hate to be disturbed.

"Mr Grey, my apologies for the intrusion. There is a young lady down here by the name of Diana Bennet. She claims to have urgent business with you and that she needs to see you immediately. I have tried to turn her away but…well, she says that if you do not meet with her, Mrs Lincoln is going to cause you some degree of difficulty."

Silence crackled through the receiver. Christian's stomach instantly contracted with an untold degree of pain. Taylor's voice wafted around the apartment on loudspeaker and he watched with darkening eyes as Anastasia stiffened at the sink and twisted her head to stare at him. He raised a brow in unspoken question and she gave a sharp, short nod of her head. Resigning himself and feeling anger bubble up in him, he sighed and turned back to the phone.

"Send her up. No more interruptions."

"Yes Sir."

Striding across the room he gently prised the bottle of Sancerre from an unnaturally impassive Anastasia's hands and took her into his arms. Nuzzling into her neck, he held her against his warm torso with a tightness that took her breath away. His copper hair tickled her earlobes as he whispered gently into her ear.

"Whatever this is, we'll deal with it together. Agreed?"

She slid her slender hands over his and nodded, embracing his warmth and his clean scent. All the things that were hers and hers alone. The old Anastasia would have burned with insecurity at an ex turning up during lunch and clutching a grenade with an Elena Lincoln trigger. The new Anastasia would simply stand by her man and fight off attack after attack until the offence didn't have another forward surge in them.

"Agreed."

He released her with a soft kiss to her temple as the elevator pinged into action. Stepping out and forcing herself not to scream with envy at the domestic sight that greeted her, Diana advanced slowly into the kitchen. Automatically, Christian reached down to clasp Anastasia's hand in his and walked slowly with her by his side to meet the girl he had shunned. In truth, he knew he deserved to feel a degree of shame for the way he had treated her. But he didn't. It was unfortunate, sure, but nothing and no one could've come between him going to New York that night. Diana was merely collateral damage to a much bigger picture.

"Sir."

He cringed. Anastasia stiffened.

"My name is Christian," the uncomfortable millionaire muttered, "Call me Christian. And tell me what you need to tell me and leave. We were in the middle of lunch. So, unless you also have some sort of phantom child that just happens to be mine, we'd really like to get back to it. And if this is just another of Elena's schemes, you can get out right now. I am in no mood for that woman's bullshit."

Diana stared at the hand-holding couple and felt a crushing jealousy.

But somehow, she managed to swallow it down.

"I don't want to be here any bit more than you want me here. This could cost me everything. But it's the right thing to do. I know the pregnancy thing with Michaela was wrong and I'm sorry for that. To both of you. But there's something you should know. Something you really need to know. And it's going to make you angry and it's going to make you want to throw me out on the street, but you need to know."

As Ana's eyes widened and Christian's darkened, Diana drew a deep breath.

"When Elena set me up with you Christian, she explained that you had been unpredictable. Told me that you had gone off the rails since Anastasia left you. She said that it was in my best interest that I have an insurance policy. Something to use in case you treated me poorly and I needed recompense. She gave me a contact lens camera that I wore on my first visit here. Mine is not too incriminating, the night you threw me out was to be our first real night. But I have the negotiation of the contract and all the particulars. But I'm not the only one she gave the camera lens to. Michaela has one, and about four or five others. There's footage of the playroom. Of extreme _activities_ in the playroom."

She took a nervous step back as Christian's face took on a positively terrifying hue. His lips pared back in a feral snarl and Ana had to physically restrain from pouncing forwards in a lithe attack. His chest heaved momentously under the shock that deafened his ears. His throat burned, his eyes bulged and the room was closing in. Diana swam in and out of focus. This couldn't be happening. This could _not_ be happening. GEH was his child. His brainchild. Aside from Anastasia and his family, it was all he had. All he had built. And Elena was going to unleash an attack it couldn't survive. Washington was a conservative town and images of its most aloof and reserved CEO fucking and flogging his way through a series of brunette look-a-likes would rock its foundations to the core.

"She met us today for lunch. Michaela and I. She says she has some way around our NDA's, all our NDA's. She says she can make it that there will be no legal ramifications of spilling the news. But she needs our original copies. Duplicate lens feed is poor quality, barely watchable. Definitely not recognisable in terms of faces, voices etc. I have my original, Michaela has hers and the other girls have theirs as well. She wants them. She wants them all and she's willing to pay big money. Christian, you know the girls I'm talking about fell in love with you one by one and were scorned when you ended things with them. They will take the money for the satisfaction of seeing you burn."

Rooting in her winter jacket, she extracted a small USB stick and placed it on the kitchen counter with a trembling hand and spoke in a tremoring voice.

"That's my original copy. She has a duplicate but like I said, it's not worth a thing. That's why she's willing to break the bank to get her hands on the rest of these USB's. Michaela is going to give her hers and she's meeting the rest of the girls over the course of the coming week. She has no idea I am here. You know as well as I do I will never find another Dom in Washington once she finds out what I've done. She will destroy me. But I couldn't do this. Not to you. Not to anyone. It's sick. It's sick and it's perverted and I just want to be done with her and with everything. That's why I'm here."

Her long speech ended abruptly and a screaming silence took its place. Christian was close to hyperventilating. He couldn't speak. Couldn't pair vowels with consonants and syllables with offbeats. His palm grew slippery with sweat in Anastasia's and he paled so hard and so fast that any Doctor worth their salt would have instantly whipped out an ECG machine. Diana looked at both of them with fear in her eyes and it was that fear that snapped Ana out of her stunned reverie.

"Diana, do you want some lunch?"

Christian and Miss Bennet stared at her as if she had lost all and any semblance of her mind. She smiled serenely back at them with her brain whirring into overdrive. Slipping her hand out of Christian's, she offered her already loaded plate of eggs and bacon to a gaping Diana with a small smile. Christian watched with ogling eyes and exchanged a confused glance with the woman who had just dropped an Elena sized bomb in his apartment.

"Anastasia, what are you-"

"Christian, Diana has come here with no upside in sight for her. You and I both know how manipulative Elena is and how easily she can twist things. You, regardless of the merits of the situation, treated Diana poorly and the fact that she's here is something we can't turn our noses up at because it doesn't fit into our bubble. I did warn you. I did tell you. Elena was never going to let you go without a fight. And you can't win a fight with next to no information about the other side."

She gestured to Diana with as warm a smile as she could genuinely muster.

"She has information. Information that Elena doesn't know she's offering. There is no better kind of information and we need to know everything we can possibly know if we're going to beat this bitch once and for all. This can't go on. Waiting for the next insane attempt on our relationship. This woman needs to be taken down and taken down in a way that she can never crawl back from. And to do that, we need Diana and Diana needs us."

She glanced at the two of them, a glass of orange juice in hand.

"Do you both understand?"

Two sets of stunned eyes met hers and two heads nodded in unashamed awe. Anastasia Steele was now a force to be reckoned with when her man was under attack and it was clear from her almost ferally calm poise that there was only woman going to emerge victorious from the oncoming war and it wasn't Elena Lincoln. Turning to face a wonderous looking Christian, she raised a brow and spoke cryptically, not wanting Diana to be privy to his deepest, darkest secret.

"I have a plan. But that plan necessitates telling your family about Mrs Robinson. I know that's going to be incredibly hard and I know it's something you never, ever wanted to do. But for this to work and work in a way that will never require a repeat performance, we need the backing of the Grey family. They will understand and they will support you. And to be honest, it will help them understand and accept me as being back in your life. I will be by your side and I will stand by you when you tell them. The hold needs to be broken. The secrecy needs to go. You do that, and I promise, we'll take care of the rest together."

Diana's mouth fell open at the depth of love she saw between the two.

There was no way in hell she would ever have been able to compete with that. And to her intense surprise, she felt a degree of happiness for the couple as Christian reached out for Anastasia's offered hand and gripped it tightly, answering her plea with a soft squeeze and a swift nod. Still intertwined, they turned to Miss Bennet as one and Christian spoke quietly, knowing there was yet another admission he had to make.

"Diana, I owe you an apology. The way I treated you was abhorrent. You deserved better and I ought to have treated you with a certain degree of decency. What you and Michaela did with the fake pregnancy debacle was despicable, yes, but under Elena's thumb and with the way I dismissed you, I should've seen it coming. We reap what we sow. So, thank you, for coming here today and telling us what you've told us. I know the power Elena can wield in the scene and the risk you're taking. I promise that if you help us, I won't allow you to be harmed. You have my word."

Anastasia's approving smile was warm and sunny as it reflected in his eyes.

Diana gave a tentative nod and squared her shoulders, darting her eyes back to the woman who clearly held Christian Grey's heart in her hands. She could see it. She really could. This woman was a force. One not to be messed with. She returned a shy smile and spoke with a confidence she was beginning to really feel.

"So, Anastasia, where do I come in? I'll do whatever it takes to make up for what I've done and walk away from this mess with my head held high. I can see how happy you two are and no one should ever be allowed to interfere with something like that. I don't like to be used and between the three of is, Elena Lincoln is a dead woman walking."

…

TBC

….


	22. Chapter 22

Bile pulsated in his windpipe as he rose from the table to greet her.

Not a speck of his discomfort showed upon his features. Years of dominating the business landscape made for one hell of a poker face. The queasiness that sloshed in his stomach was hidden deep. He had no choice but to allow her manicured hands to squeeze his shoulders gently. Looking around the Grey family dining room appreciatively, she raised a brow as she sat.

"Grace finally decided to redecorate?"

Christian nodded with hatred in his heart and serenity on his face.

"She did. She had an interior designer come in to lend a hand in the end."

Elena nodded with a glint of satisfaction in her eyes. She had been stunned when Christian had called, his voice dripping with morose dejection. Her ears had twitched when he had told her about how things between he and Anastasia had taken a sudden nosedive. About how they had gotten into a heated argument about his needs versus her reservations. About how he was tired of her inability to accept him for who he was even in the face of all the sacrifices he was willing to make for her. About how he wanted to give up the life for her, but he didn't know if he could. About how he was already beginning to prickle with the need for release.

About how he needed to see her, one last time, to talk things through.

On the one condition that she never tell Anastasia.

Elena had leapt at the chance. Subtly. She had made him work for it as he knew she would. He'd had to come as close to apologising as he ever had for the current ruination of their relationship. He'd had to put the work in to show her how vulnerable he was. He knew she wouldn't be able to resist the chance to stick the knife in when he was down. She would never be able to resist the draw of crowing over him, sitting in the halo of her own self-satisfied smugness. And she sure as shit wouldn't be able to stay away from the opportunity to sneak behind Anastasia's back with him.

Their matching bowls of soup slowly cooled in front of them.

She would wait for him to speak first. He knew it.

"Thanks for coming," he murmured softly, running his hand around the slim stem of his wine glass. "I didn't know if you would or not. What with everything…"

He deliberately let his voice trail off into uncertain nothingness.

She would take the bait like the hungriest, lowliest sea creature.

"By everything, are you referring to the despicably ungrateful manner in which you've been treating me in favour of that little harpy?"

It took every ounce of his remarkable self-control to nod sheepishly.

"Something like that."

She smiled her slow, slack smile of self-righteousness. She knew this day would come. She knew he would see sense. Knew he would recognise the woman he was throwing away was bullion gold compared to the brass tramp that was Anastasia Steele. But she wasn't about to let him return to the fold with any kind of ease just because he looked at her with the adoration she knew he still felt for her. He had to learn. He had to be educated on the conditional nature of her association with him.

"And why, after all that disrespect, should I give a shit about your pathetic life, Christian? You sit there in a three-thousand dollar suit that you never would have afforded but for me. You drove here in a car you never would have afforded but for me. You walk around without chains of incarceration at your feet, a freedom you never would have afforded but for me. And you were going to cut me off like a cancerous growth because, what? She _told_ you to? And then you come crawling back when things go to shit, like I told you they would, and expect a pat on the head? Is that it?"

He burned.

He physically burned.

His eyes splintered with what she mistook as regret, but what was really a dangerous rage. His breathing was contorted as he battled to remain outwardly calm. His fingers drummed against his mother's favourite linen tablecloth. If he did this right, if he played his cards right, this would be the last time he would ever have to suffer the predator across from him. He couldn't crumble under the provocation. Not now. Not when he had so much to lose and so much to gain.

Time to go hard or go home.

"I'm sorry, Elena. Alright? There. I said it. I'm fucking sorry. You know how she turns my head. I can't think straight around her. It's only when I'm away from her spell and at the office or the gym or wherever, that I can think clearly. And it's in those times that I know I don't want to lose you from my life. My heads fucked. It's all over the place. And I don't have anyone else to talk to you but you. You're the only one who ever really understood me."

He glanced down at the table and wondered where his Oscar was.

"I'm spiralling out of control. Like before. Like the first time we met."

He peeked back up at her with just the right degree of tortured fear.

"I need your help, Elena. Please. Where else can I turn?"

Sighing with all the drama of the red carpet, her scarlet nails clinked against her wine glass as she pretended to ponder deeply. A sense of bitter happiness was radiating through her as her win over Anastasia fucking Steele became sweeter and sweeter by the nanosecond. She'd warned that little hussy that she would never get the best of her, and here was the living proof. She and Christian were cut from the same cloth. They were destined to rub along in the same, select circles.

And that Mary-Sue whore was destined to watch from the outside in.

"I will help you, Christian. I've been helping you your whole life. But if you ever cross me again, I will rain a level of hell down upon your head that they never told you about in Sunday school. I will end you and everything that goes along with you. I made you and I can break you. Is that completely fucking understood?"

For the first time in his life, he would have happily committed murder.

As it was, he nodded with the faintest trace of contriteness that she was looking for. Too little, and she would think he wasn't taking her seriously. Too much, and she would grow suspicious. She studied him for a moment, revelling in his fall from grace before nodding sharply.

"What's the little tramp's problem now?"

He resisted the urge to throw her wine straight into her toad face.

"She just doesn't understand. I've tried to make her see, tried to make her think outside her comfort zone. I just know if she knew what the lifestyle did for me, she wouldn't be so quick to condemn it and all those within in it. I've explained to her that if it wasn't for the things you taught me, I'd be in a state jail with nothing but delinquency to show for my life. But her view is set in stone. What we are and what we do, is to her, immoral. She can't see things any other way than in the darkest black and whitest white."

He sighed with a believability factor that amazed even him.

"She doesn't believe that I can give it up. I've told her I will. Promised her even. And she refuses to believe me. She's always questioning me about how long it will take before she's not enough anymore. And I'm saying never, you know? You'll always be enough. But I'm not sure if that's true. I want it to be true. I do. But I'm already slipping. Since that night with Diana, I haven't had a single ounce of release or relief. The cracks are beginning to show and there's no let-up in sight."

His fingers ran along the slender stem of his glass as he shook his head.

"What do I do?"

Elena pursed her lips.

A wave of condescending distaste was spewing from her every pore. Didn't she tell him all this? In no uncertain terms? Didn't she predict it, warn against it? And there he was. Crying like a bitch about the blindingly obvious consequences of his unbearable stupidity. She watched the last wisp of steam leave her congealing soup and tutted quietly.

"If you're not going to leave her, Christian, you'll have to educate her."

He smiled internally.

As much as this ordeal was paining him, her predictability was juicy.

"How the hell do I do that? She won't listen."

She bared her teeth in her perverse version of a warming smile.

"Explanations are always at their best when they start from the beginning. She hates me. That much is glaringly obvious. But her hate is born from ignorance and her ignorance is bred from a lack of _detailed_ information. She doesn't truly know how you were back then and she doesn't surely know how I stepped in to make you the man you are today. She sees only the outside of our world. You need to show her the inside. Those things that are more than skin deep."

His brow knitted together in pitch perfect confusion.

"What are you saying, exactly?"

She rolled her eyes, revelling in her superior intellect.

"You need to sit her stupid ass down and explain everything I did for you and how it ultimately saved you from yourself. How the methods I used were what needed to be done. How _she_ could benefit from having those methods applied to her pampered little self. If she wants you, she needs to understand you. Once she understands you, she'll know she could never expect you to give up who you are for her. Nor will she want you to."

His look of askance was timed to a split second.

"I could never do that. Where would I even fucking begin?"

"Jesus, Christian, do you need me to tell you the sky is blue and the grass is green? You start from the beginning. You start from when you were a fifteen-year-old tearaway that was angry at the world. You move on to the weeks and weeks that you mowed my lawn with your little puffed-up chest bared and on display whilst I watched you from afar. You move on to the first time I called you in for iced tea in the kitchen before we moved on to something more substantial in the bedroom."

She threw him a wink and putrid vomit caterwauled in his gut.

"You move on to how I popped your angry little cherry. You move on to how I taught you how to fuck, how to pleasure, how to please a woman to the point where her legs no longer function. You move on to how I whipped you bloody when you would cause your parents distress, give me lip or just because I felt like it. You move on to how I would wait for my husband to leave before I would call you. You move on to how I would oil up my favourite flogger whilst I was waiting for you to ride your little bike over. You know the one? The one that left those delightful little trails on your back and your ass?"

She grinned conspiratorially at him as his innards glazed over with ice.

"You tell her all about how I fucked and whipped you from a surly fifteen-year-old to a respectful sixteen-year-old. You tell her all about how I sucked and strapped you from a talented seventeen-year-old to jaw dropping eighteen-year-old. You tell her all about how I fisted and flogged you from High School graduate to Harvard Freshman. You tell her all about how I took you from boyhood to manhood years before your peers had even shaved their first chin hair."

Her eyes glinted with a sickening pride as she surveyed him astutely.

"Tell her all that, with ten times more detail, and it'll either make or break you two."

Christian's chest deflated with relief. Sweet, staggering relief. Slipping his hand into his pocket, he fished out the slim black tape recorder and set it silently on the table, switching it off as he did. Her eyes were without reaction for the shortest moment before they filled with poisonous understanding like a rising tide. Her face flushed with burning betrayal and apoplectic anguish.

"You _bastard,"_ she shrieked, "You double crossing _cunt."_

He shrugged.

"I'm all that and more, Elena. And you, lady, are fucked."

His eyes swivelled to the swinging door that led to the kitchen as it opened. One by one, they filed in. First his mother and father. Then Elliot and Mia. Right behind them, and the only one he was searching for, came a pale but resolved looking Anastasia. Swinging around viciously to see who was entering, Elena's hot and flushed face fell to a North Pole pale.

But that blanc pallor lasted for only a minute.

Grace Trevelyan-Grey was a dignified, kind and respected woman. But she was first and foremost a mother. Nobody stopped her as she lost her restraint and flew at Elena with her claws out and readied. Mrs Lincoln's shriek of surprised shock reverberated around the room as the good Doctor slapped her with such force that blood spurted from her split lip. Her cries of pain were unanswered as the medic swiped again and again at her painted face, splotches of furious red popping up where her hand fell.

She stopped as suddenly as she started.

Stepping back, she nodded breathlessly to her stationary son, and melted back into the shadows to join her husband, recently arrived children and Ana. With her hair tossed and bedraggled and with her face bruising and bleeding, Elena slumped in her chair with acute shock flowing in her veins.

Christian pressed his advantage and spoke with a slow softness.

"That recording transmits data to designated email accounts. It's currently nestled in account after account, sealed with the best security that money can buy. It cannot be infiltrated. You will listen closely because I will not repeat myself. I know, Elena. Alright? I know. About Michaela, about Diana, about all the girls and all the contact lenses. I know that you were going to expose me."

His lips twitched.

"But now the tides are changing, Elena. This is your last chance station. If you do not leave Anastasia and I to get on with our lives, Carrick over there is going to ensure you spend your golden years in state lockup. He will overcome all legal hurdles that would see you escape justice. He's going to make it his business to impress upon every inmate in that lockup the reasons for your being there. Your business will be liquidated and your name will be sullied to the point of extinction."

His head tilted.

"Furthermore, if you attempt to enact any vengeance upon any of the girls that have been in my life, the same consequences shall apply. Without warning or mitigation. If you become responsible for any facet of my private life becoming public fodder, you will pay. With my significant inroads in publishing, I can have our tale of depravity and woe splattered across every major paper in this country with one push of a button. I will suffer reputationally, I accept that. It is more than a reasonable price to pay to see you get what you so richly deserve. This is the end of the line, Elena. Look around you. See my family, see Anastasia. See the only people I need. They know. The secret is out. No more cloak and dagger bullshit. It's done. I'm done. You're done."

He rose and beckoned Ana to him.

She swept across the room and wrapped her arm tightly around his waist.

His arm draped closely over her shoulders.

"It's time to go, Elena."

He turned to his side when Ana suddenly disentangled herself with a quiet "wait" and watched silently as she advanced upon the defeated Mrs Robinson. With a deliberate slowness and a hardness that Christian had never seen in her before. She scooped up the thickly congealed soup in one hand and poured it over Elena's head with a flourish. As the amber vegetable liquid cascaded down the paedophile's cheeks to intermingle with her blood, she slipped back into Christian's arms. Her voice rang with determined satisfaction, intertwining with Mia's approving whoop and Elliot's soft "I owe that girl one hell of an apology."

Ana's voice rose above it all.

"Now it's time for her to go."

Broken, utterly outplayed and disgraced, Elena clambered to her feet. Under all her harsh words and painted façade, lay the heart of a coward. Looking through soup covered eyes at the amassed family before her, love radiating from all angles, a strangled sob escaped her broken lips. With a spluttery cough, she turned on her heel and bolted from the room. Streaks of soup marked her path all along the tiled floors until the front door crashed shut with a thunderous clatter.

Silence encased the room like a galvanised steel cage.

It was Christian who eventually broke the stalemate.

"Anyone have the number for the Dr Phil show?"

Laugher filled the air, washing away the tense silence as he drew Ana to him, gazing down at her with adoration in his eyes. She had been right. Then again, she'd always been right. His thumb roved over her strong jawline as his family tactfully melted into the kitchen, rustling up some lunch.

"You were magnificent, Mr Grey."

His rare boyish grin blinded her. Rendered her dazed by his gaze.

"This was all you, baby. Because of you, I'm living fifty shades of free."

….

TBC

…


	23. Chapter 23

"I'm just saying that you would be much more comfortable-"

"Christian. We talked about this. I'm not going to work at GEH. Ever."

Nothing pulled at her heartstrings like the rare crestfallen expressions that crossed his face. In those moments, he always reminded her of a very well groomed, but heartbreakingly saddened puppy. It didn't help that his eyes were the most expressive she had ever seen. And right now, those eyes were hurt.

"Is there something wrong with my company?"

She sighed.

"No, there's absolutely nothing wrong with GEH. It's an amazing company. You know that. But I need to do some things on my own. I want to know that every progression I make is because I've earned it. On my own merits and my own merits alone. Sleeping with the boss isn't something I've ever aspired to, that's all."

He glared over his glass of orange juice.

"Fine. Then don't sleep with me. Just take a job."

Her laughter made Mrs Jones, all the way down the hall, smile.

"Repeat that to yourself. Go on, repeat it."

His wry grin was enough to set her off again. He was exquisite. And he was _hers._ All hers. No equivocations. Leaning against the breakfast counter in his white t-shirt and faded jeans he was breathtaking. She still had to pinch herself when he would drop a soft kiss on her head as he padded past her on the way to the kitchen, or when she woke up to his strong arms wrapped around her waist.

It had been three months since the showdown with Elena.

And peace had reigned supreme.

"Ok, that would be a drastically unrealistic measure," he acceded softly, "But I do have a new proposition to run past you. And before you get all hot and bothered and tell me no, will you do me the courtesy of listening to me? With an open mind?"

She eyed him suspiciously over her bowl of granola but nodded slowly.

He hesitated for the briefest moment and her suspicions grew.

Christian Grey was _not_ a hesitant man.

"During our time apart, GEH has made significant inroads into publishing. I now either own or hold a majority stake hold in fifteen major publishing companies. Spanning across all breadths and genres and across the country. It's a profitable area with the potential for serious growth if managed appropriately and if you don't run from digitisation of print media. Currently, I have a team of mid to senior level management manning those operations but there's no cohesion. There's no flow. It's too big, it's almost like a separate segment of the company. I need someone who can take charge and be accountable. A buck-stops-there someone. And that someone must be someone I know, I can trust, and that I have every belief can handle it."

He tilted his head at her and raised a hopeful brow.

"Do you think that someone might be you?"

Ana's mouth swung open, but before she could even fathom an answer, he realised he needed to explain himself in crystal clear clarity.

"Anastasia. You have to understand. GEH is, aside from you, the greatest thing I have ever done. It's like my child. I love it. I adore it. It's my pride and joy. I love to watch it grow. It thrills me to watch it thrive and expand. That's the one and only reason that I have succeeded as I have. Because I truly love what I do. And GEH is, I hope, going to be as much yours as it is mine someday. Nothing would make me prouder than to have you work alongside me and grow the company."

His eyes darkened with sincerity.

"Our company."

Her bright eyes shone with shock. Her repeated and instinctual response to say no to all strains of nepotism flew to her lips. But for the first time, they stayed behind them. The sheer love that was evident in his tone when he spoke of GEH was electrifying and his rise to riches made crystal clear sense. For the first time, the thoughts of being a part of that, was appealing to her. It would mean being a bigger part of him and he a bigger part of her. And pragmatically speaking, she still hadn't found work and she was growing increasingly restless.

She chewed her lip.

"What, officially, would the position be?"

Delight danced in his eyes at her merest hint of interest.

"COO of GEH Publishing."

"You're happy to have a twenty-seven-year-old COO?"

His grin was infectious.

"I was a billionaire at twenty-seven, Anastasia, I care about talent. Not age. This is not favouritism. I assure you. I know you can handle and thrive in this position. You have a literary mind that I do not. I need someone who is a natural in the industry. That's you. I know that you don't have any managerial experience per se, but that's where I would come in. This is about you knowing what's good and current and what isn't. The fact that I know I can trust you to the extreme, is just an added bonus and incentive. Look, I've sprung this on you. I know that. Just say you'll think about it? Please?"

She stared from the other side of the kitchen counter for an interminable moment. Mistaking her silence for reluctance, he held up his hands in surrender and tried to keep the disappointment from his face. He had berated himself for coming on too strong, too fast before, and he didn't want to make the same mistakes again.

She didn't give him the chance to talk himself into a tailspin.

"Can I have a trial run?"

"I shouldn't have asked, forget I asked, I understand that…. uhh, what?"

She smiled shyly at his sudden astonishment.

"As COO of GEH Publishing. Can I have a three-month trial run? If it doesn't work out, no harm no foul. If it does, we re-evaluate and look to a more permanent position moving forwards. No promises or commitments, just a trial run and see where we go from there. How does that sound?"

He gaped at her for the longest moment before sprinting around the kitchen counter. Her squeals bounced around the walls of Escala as he bodily plucked her from the ground and spun her around. Beating his back with a shriek of laughter, she was dizzy when he gently set her back onto the tiles with a burning kiss to her lips. Cupping her chin softly in his hand, he tipped her head up to his and stared at her in wonder.

"You have just made me an incredibly happy man, Miss Steele."

She bit her lip. Purposefully. Giggling when he looked at her in amused warning.

"Do I have to call you boss, now?"

His teeth flashed white as a wicked smile split across his face.

"Oh, I think so. I absolutely think so. I'll forward you on the dress code I expect of my top tier personnel. It's very simple really. Everyone's code is personalised to them. I put a great deal of thought into it. Yours, for example, is minimalist."

His fingers brushed against her collarbone as he whispered in her ear.

"Minimalist to the extreme, as a matter of fact. How do you feel about going nude?"

She grinned coyly up at him.

"I think that would make me a big hit with the boys in the mailroom. Do I get my own PA? Someone young, male, my age, not yours. And handsome, naturally."

Growling, he turned her to the side and slapped her panty clad ass with a snap. Her answering squeal drew a chuckle from his throat as he pressed a kiss to her forehead.

"Careful, Miss Steele. I am a very jealous man."

Her answering salute dripped with mockery.

Rolling his eyes, he loathed the fact that he had to go. He was already late and he hated late. He needed to grab a shower, get changed, and meet Taylor. There was a lightness in him that he couldn't compare to any feeling he'd ever had. The prospect of building GEH with Anastasia was something that consumed him.

It was a future that excited and energised him. Determining to make her three-month trial period as fluid as possible he murmured a reluctant goodbye in her ear. She released him with equal reluctance. Pausing at the doorway, he looked back with such open devotion that she thought she might choke on her own happiness. Before saying something that took it all away.

"One day, our children might be the ones to take GEH to the next level."

His soft smile burned into her brain as he strode away.

Her breath stilled in her lungs and a burning panic engulfed her.

She should have told him the minute he produced that foil wrapper the first time they got reacquainted. Or the second time. Definitely the third time. But it never seemed like the right moment. How could she tell him? How would he react? Besides, he had never really seemed like the paternal type. She had almost convinced herself that it wouldn't be an issue, that she nearly wouldn't have to tell him. She had berated herself for it. Condemned herself as a coward. But the thoughts of losing him, after everything they'd overcome in such a short reunion, were more terrifying than anything else in the world.

But he was opening himself up to her now in a way he had never done before.

She couldn't repay that honesty with dishonesty.

The pain of the doctor's office pierced her all over again. The loss she still ached with blossomed in her with a sick rapidity. Tears welled in her eyes but she blinked them back furiously. She had to tell him. It would either make or break them, she knew, but he had to know. He had to have a choice and he had to be told.

And he had to be told sooner rather than later.

Tonight.

He had to be told tonight.

…..

TBC

…..


	24. Chapter 24

"I couldn't wait for you to finish work."

Looking up in surprise from the pile of reports he was buried in, Christian stared at the source of the pained whisper in blooming concern. He thought of Ana as the most beautiful woman in the world, but in that moment, her appearance shocked him. She was even paler than she had been in her shitheap apartment back in New York and her eyes were red rimmed and withdrawn. Andrea shot him an apologetic look through the glass walls as she withdrew from the office. She knew better than to include Ana in the no interruptions rule.

"Anastasia? What's the matter? What's happened?"

He rose, his heart beginning to pound. There was real fear in her eyes. She vibrated with an impossible sadness and her shoulders buckled under the weight of whatever couldn't wait for him to finish work. His mouth ran dry as his mind drowned in the endless possibilities of misery that followed him from one year to the next.

She didn't answer.

She couldn't.

She merely choked on her words and looked at him with such acute fear that his palms began to sweat. He crossed the room in less time than ought to be physically possible. Pulling her into his chest, he frowned when she stood frozen in his embrace. She was rigid with anxiety, sending his levels rapidly through the roof.

"Anastasia," he murmured urgently, "What's going on? What is it? Are you ill? You need to tell me right now if you're sick. I need full disclosure. Talk to me. Tell me what's going on with you. Whatever it is, we can get through it. I promise you. We'll get through it. Together."

She broke away and looked up at him with fear brimming in her eyes and spoke in strangled whisper of misery.

"I'm so sorry. I wish it could be different, I really do."

His stomach was beginning to churn painfully.

"What are you talking about? Anastasia, just _tell_ me."

He placed a hand on each of her slender shoulders and stared into her eyes. She blinked back with regret in her eyes and a sense of failure embalming her insides. He deserved the world. He really did. Not that he would ever see or admit it. He'd come through so much, grown so much, and she couldn't give him the greatest gift of all. But she could at least give him the truth, and give him the corresponding out. He deserved someone who could make him whole. Who could give him what he needed. And that someone wasn't her.

She swallowed and prepared herself to slice her life in two.

"When you found me back in New York, I was in a really bad place in my life. And a lot of that was to do with us and my career going down the tubes, but the biggest part of it had nothing to do with any of that. When I moved to the city, I did all the things you do when you move to a new place. Found a dentist, doctor, dry cleaner. The works. My new medical practice was extremely thorough and insisted on a full medical for all new patients. I didn't think anything of it, I just went and had it done."

Christian's mouth ran dry as he stared without blinking.

"They called about a week later and asked me to come back in. I assumed it was just to sign some more forms or whatever, but I knew it was something else when I was brought to a private office. A Doctor came in, to this day I still can't remember his name, and asked me whether or not I was sexually active. We'd broken up and at the time, I wasn't. He asked me whether I had ever given any thoughts to family planning, and I hadn't. Other than the shots Dr Greene gave me, I'd never really thought about it. I told him that and he frowned before he pushed a box of tissues my way. I knew then that something was wrong."

Christian wasn't breathing as he gazed with a burning urgency.

"He told me that all my tests had come back. There'd been a lot of them. And I was perfectly healthy. But there was one concern. My results indicated a high degree of infertility. The kind of infertility that makes IVF or any other treatments futile. If, by some medical miracle such a treatment _did_ result in a pregnancy, that pregnancy would be extraordinarily dangerous for me and would most certainly result in a fatal foetal abnormality in the child."

She swallowed with a small gulp and offered a bitter summary.

"I can't have children, Christian. You and I can never have a child that is biologically ours. I can never give you a son or daughter to take over GEH. I should have told you that the moment I saw you in New York, but I was afraid you wouldn't want to be with me after you knew I wasn't whole. When you brought up kids this morning, I knew I had to tell you before I could convince myself it wasn't the right time. Again. I'm infertile, Christian. Broken. I can never carry your child inside me. Ever."

She bowed her head as the reality of the truth consumed her.

"I'm so sorry."

Silence permeated every nook and cranny in the pristine office. Neither spoke a word for an interminable eternity. Ana stared steadily at the ground, waiting for her dizzying high to become a crushing low. How she would ever go back to being Ana, just Ana, sans Christian she didn't know. That was a future she couldn't bear to contemplate. She simply couldn't bring herself to look up and see the devastation she knew would colour his face.

"Anastasia. Look at me."

His quiet voice broke the tension-laden stalemate. She flinched at the sound of it and couldn't find it in herself to heed it. How could she look at him and see the damage she had done? How could she possibly look into the grey eyes that had already seen so much hurt and pain and know she just delivered the final, fatal blow?

He took the option away from her.

A gentle thumb hooked under her chin and guided her head slowly upwards. His face was calm under the mop of copper hair. There was no thunder or lightening. There were no clouds of grey. There was just him. The same as he'd been at breakfast. The same as he'd been the night before. His hand was soft as it supported her gaze.

"Listen to me," he commanded quietly, "And listen closely. I _never_ want to hear you apologise for something that is outside of your control, ever again. I _never_ want to hear you refer to yourself as broken, ever again. You are not to blame and you are nothing short of perfection. It's not a case of _you_ not being able to have children. It's a case of _we_ not being able to have children. There is no you or I, there is only we."

His smile was small and sincere and it carved a bullet wound in her heart.

"I am adopted, Anastasia. The Greys gave me the kind of life that led me to where I am today. I love my mother, I love my father. I love my sister and my brother. I love them regardless of their DNA and my DNA. I love them regardless of their hair and my hair, their eyes and my eyes. A biological connection is by no means the be all and end all when it comes to children. I do not _care_ that you cannot give birth to a mini-me or a mini-you. Life is what you make it. We can give an amazing home and life to a child that really needs it. We can adopt. If that's what you want. Or we can just be us. As we are now. If that's what you want. But a child isn't a make or break factor. I don't want to _need_ children to be a family. I want to _want_ children because _we_ want them. I don't need a son or a daughter with my chin and your hair to make me whole."

His stare scorched her as his sincerity salved her.

Wiping away a tear that tasted of joyous disbelief, he smiled his crooked smile down at her and pressed a kiss atop her head. Breathing in her scent, there wasn't a note of falsehood in his voice.

"As long as I have you, Anastasia, I am already whole."

….

TBC

….


	25. Chapter 25

Pulling and tugging at her long braid, Anastasia was a hot mess.

The lawyers were due to call any minute and her stomach was a sick cesspool of anxiety. Countless scenarios of dread raced around and around in her mind. Even in the library, her second favorite place in Escala, she couldn't relax. Her muscles were tense, her eyes darted from the book she valiantly attempted to read to her cell every three seconds, and no amount of water could quench her thirst. It had been three months since her revelations to Christian, and her desire to know was beginning to keep her up at night.

No matter what assurances he gave her, she had to _know._

Children were not something either of them wanted right away, but she needed to know they were a possibility. She needed to know that there would be the pitter patter of tiny feet in the hallways of their home one day. Or not so tiny feet, it didn't matter. They had decided they were going to open their home to the child in most need of it. It was something that Christian was passionate about and his energy was an infectious condition. Her reservations about adopting a potentially older child melted away the night they talked and talked over two bottles of Sancerre. She had opened her mind to the possibility of any child when Christian had spoken softly of the life he had found with the Greys. How they had saved him and made him who he was today.

If they could do _that_ for another child, how could they _not?_

Even though she never thought it possible, she was beginning to heal. The wounds that the Doctors back in New York had lacerated her with, were beginning to close. Back then, to her, infertility was a taboo word. It meant that her life began and ended with her. She would never be the reason another person walked the Earth. She would never know the maternal bond between a mother and son, or a mother and daughter. Her depression had engulfed her. Add the loss of Christian and her failing career to the mix, it was no wonder he had found in her in the skid row of her own life.

But it was all turning around, now.

And she was seizing it with both hands.

He had laughed at her suitability concerns, quickly sobering up when a well-aimed cushion sailed towards his widening eyes. Her worries were, to her, well-founded. Their relationship history was spotty, at best, to an outsider. She was only in her third week of running Grey Publishing and he worked all the hours known to man. Neither had any experience whatsoever in childcare. Christian, she was quite sure, wouldn't know arms from legs or eyes from ears.

He had merely snorted with laughter when she presented him with these facts.

 _Ana, I'm not as hopeless as you might think. Besides, we'd have Mrs Jones…_

She smiled at the memory. He was so endearing, her fiercely flawed fifty. He really had no idea of himself, how empathetic he was. He had directed the lawyers to deal only with her, somehow knowing that she needed control over the situation when her own situation was so out of her hands.

The lawyers were three minutes late in calling.

Her pulse began to scream inside her. What if there was a problem? All she was waiting on was a suitability report. She could have done it herself, with the adoption agency, but Christian insisted on using the best and brightest of his own legal team. There must be a problem. No one who worked for Christian was ever late with anything, ever. Including her. He was borderline maniacal when it came to punctuality.

They were seven minutes late, now.

Her hand snatched out and scooped up her cell. There was plenty of signal and battery, all the essentials for a life-changing call. She wrestled with the idea of calling Christian and asking him if he knew anything. Two things stopped her. One, she didn't want to worry him. Two, she didn't want to be responsible for an entire department losing their jobs.

They were nine minutes late, now.

Panic was beginning to hit home and hard. There _had_ to be an issue. They weren't suitable. _She_ wasn't suitable. If there was a problem, it was with her. Unequivocally. Sweat pooled at her brow as she hugged herself on the white leather chair. The memory of New York was sizzling at the corners of her mind. She tried to blink it away, but couldn't. She tried to rationalize, instead. It was Friday. Maybe lawyers were just busy on Fridays. Maybe one of them had fallen and smacked their stupid head off the side of their desk and was lying comatose on the floor.

Was it wrong to hope it was that?

There were eleven minutes late, now.

She was calling him. Screw it. If she went to twelve minutes, she would implode. Mrs Jones would be scraping her intestines off the walls for weeks. Unlocking her cell, the option was suddenly removed from her.

They were calling.

Answering with trembling fingers, her voice was urgent.

"Hello?"

A pleasant and young female voice breezed down the line, clipped with efficiency.

"Hello. Am I speaking with Miss Anastasia Steele?"

She closed her eyes and prayed for a miracle.

"Yes, this is she."

"Excellent. Miss Steele, I am calling regarding the suitability report that yourself and Mr Grey requisitioned. I apologize for the delay in getting back to you, but I've just hung up with the adoption agency. They are going to forward the official documents today, but I can relay the verbal decision to you now, if you like?"

Blood spurted from Ana's lip as she bit down viciously upon it.

"Yes, I would like to know now."

The distinctive rustling of papers wafted down the line.

"Absolutely, Miss Steele. As you know, a suitability report is merely a registration of interest and a rough estimation of the probability of success in adoption. It's essentially a vetting procedure and getting your name on the register. I'm happy to tell you that yourself and Mr Grey's register application has been accepted and your background checks have flagged no issues. You have been sorted into the category of _desirable applicant_ which essentially means that as of now, at this early stage, the adoption agency considers your and Mr Grey's application to be in very good standing."

Azure blue eyes swelled to incorporate the Atlantic Ocean.

 _"_ _What?"_

The voice was smiling now, she could tell.

"It's good news, Miss Steele. When you are both ready, whether it's today, tomorrow or three years from now, you and Mr Grey are in a great position to adopt. The agency loved you both at the information meeting and appreciated the effort you were both putting into planning your application. You impressed them. It's very good news."

Time stood still, shimmering in front of her eyes.

She was going to burst.

From the inside out, she was going to explode.

With the kind of joy that, save for finding Christian, she had never experienced.

Elation consumed her as her future fluttered down to lay at her feet. The world really was their oyster. They weren't ready yet, they were enjoying just being them for now, but in three or four years… definitely. She wanted a noisy house. She wanted to go to soccer games, PTA meetings and kiss little knees and elbows better. She wanted Christian to play with his little boy or girl with that rare softness on his face. She wanted him to bring he or she, or maybe even he _and_ she, out on the boat, into the office, all the dad things he would excel at.

She wanted a family.

"Thank you," she managed to croak out, joyful tears popping to her eyes. "Thank you so much."

The lawyer on the other end of the line smiled widely.

"My pleasure, Miss Steele. Please let me know if there is anything else I can do for you. Your application is open as of now and will remain so until you decide on a definite course of action. I am available on this number at all times, please do not hesitate to call if you have any questions. You have a lovely evening."

The call disconnected.

Before she could even begin to process the processing process, the cell shrilled again.

 _Christian._

This time, her fingers were shaking with bliss when she answered.

"Christian, you won't believe what-"

"Miss Steele, would you do me the pleasure of meeting me outside? I have a surprise for you. I am in the parking lot. Take the elevator straight down. I will see you in three minutes."

The line went dead.

She blinked in surprise.

Before moving as if on autopilot.

Usually, she would question the surprise. Be apprehensive of it. But her news was bursting from her and she would have run to wherever he stood, no questions asked, to share it with him. Barrelling into the elevator with a smile that stretched her lips to capacity, she jabbed the ground floor button with breathless impatience. Zooming through the layers of the luxury apartment building, she saw fleeting images of children dancing through the levels.

She had never known such a level of unworldly happiness.

She could only hope Christian would share her joy.

Stepping out into the car lot, he took her breath away. Leaning against his favorite Audi R8, he was straight out of a magazine. His patent white cotton shirt, open at the collar paired with his faded denim jeans made for a mouth-watering combination. He grinned his rare boyish grin when he spied her and straightened up, stretching out a welcoming hand. As she eyed him, clarity engulfed her. She would live and die for this man. She was irrevocably tied to him. Her was her night and day and everything in between. For the first time, she was grateful for their six-year separation. It made everything clearer. Christian Grey, and everything that went with him, was the man for her. Come hell or high water.

She melted across the lot to him.

He pressed a gentle finger over her lips as she parted them eagerly.

"Shh, I need you to say nothing. Absolutely nothing. Not a word. I want to do something first, and after that, you can tell me what the lawyers said. I don't know, I promise you that. I want to hear it from you, but I need to show you your surprise first. Can you do that for me, Miss Steele? Can you keep your infamously smart mouth closed for just a little longer? I promise to make it worth your while."

Her news screamed within her, begging to be released.

But he had that look on his face.

That _Christian_ look.

She could deny him nothing.

His warm hands guided her into the passenger side of his most beloved car, and he slipped in beside her with a rare and youthful look in his eyes. He was the only person in her world who could make gray sparkle. She turned to him when he zoomed out of the lot, curiously beginning to bite hard and fast. He grinned at her silent consternation and winked.

"Patience is a virtue, Ana dearest."

She tried to glare.

She really did.

But she was too freaking happy.

Seattle was settling into a lazy summers evening as they zipped along her quiet streets. With the windows down, the sounds of singing birds and laughing children followed them on their journey. Several times, she opened her mouth to ask _where_ they were going and _what_ was going on, but his gentle fingers always found her lips just in time to seal them with his burning touch and a playful grin.

"Patience, baby. We're not far away."

She melted.

He could melt the ice caps faster than global warming ever would.

Summer scents assailed her as they drove along. She breathed them in. Bliss bloomed in her and she realized that this was the happiest she had ever been. She was beside the love of her life. The one that had so _very_ nearly been the one who got away, and he was exquisite. She might not be pregnant in the physical and conventional sense, but she _felt_ pregnant. The promise of children was within her grasp and she was guarding that promise the way she would guard her own fledging embryo within the walls of her cold and lifeless womb.

 _Their_ fledgling embryo.

The car was cruising to a halt. His smile was genial as he handled the vehicular beauty with the ease in which he handled everything. He was as always, the consummate CEO. Ana glanced out the windows and realized with a jolt that she had zoned the hell out. They had gained substantial altitude. The mountainous terrain that surrounded Seattle was seldom visited and remained unmarked by man.

It was beautiful.

Spying her confused and amazed look, he parked the car at the point to which it could go no further. Grinning, he unbuckled both of their belts. Jumping from the car, he crossed to her side and opened her door. Extending his hand to her, his face was alight with youthful happiness.

"The no talking rule is still in place, Miss Steele. Please remember that."

She once again tried to glare.

And once again, she failed.

Slipping her hand into his, she allowed him to guide her from the car with a bemused smile on her face. Gazing up at the sun soaked hilly terrain, she was in wonderment. Just as she was adjusting to her elevated height, those heights became even dizzier.

Somehow, suddenly, she was hanging over his shoulder.

Squealing, she beat his back and opened her mouth to scream for her upright status. Chuckling, he playfully swatted her jeans clad backside and his honeyed voice blended into the tranquil night.

"No _noise,_ Miss Steele. You have to trust me. Silently."

Gasping, she inhaled his clean scent and clutched his crisp white shirt as his muscular frame began moving. She didn't feel afraid as he somehow managed to ascent the sloping hill in front of them with an ease. He would never drop her or stumble.

He was Christian.

Bewilderment besieged her as they ascended in silence. Her hair swung like a curtain to blanket her face against the canvas of his broad back. He spoke not a word as he strode swiftly and upwardly, his toned legs propelling him with little to no difficulty. Her slight weight was no burden as he rose and rose, revelling in the manual nature of the walk after a long day in his glass tower.

And suddenly, so very suddenly, she was back on her Converse clad feet.

His hand was gentle as he steadied her, brushing her hair from her face and turning her torso to position her back to his chest, his arms wrapped tightly around her waist. His nose nuzzled against her neck as she stared at what he wanted to show her in complete and utter amazement.

"We're here, baby."

It was breathtaking.

Seattle was laid out before them in a never-ending meander of beauty. They were situated on a plateau of gravelled rock, nowhere near the top of the mountainous marvel, but nowhere near the bottom either. The air was clean and crisp. The noise of traffic had never been heard by the ears of the creatures that chirped around them. The sun was beginning to set, casting a rosy glow over the place they called home and shrouding them in its spotlight.

It was beautiful.

He was suddenly in front of her.

"I wanted you to see this before I knew anything about the adoption agency. I wanted you to see this as we stand now, just Christian and Ana. This is our legacy, this is where it all began. Look out, look out and see everything before you. Down there is where I first saw you. Down there is where I first held you. Down there is where I first loved you."

His hands moved to hold her face in a gentle grasp.

"Whether we have no children, or a hundred children, my love for you is like this city. It is alive. It is an electric current that can never be tripped. I told you once before that I didn't want children because they made us a family. I want to bring children into our family and grow it until it bursts at the seams. You are my family, Anastasia. And Seattle is where my family began. That is why I brought you here. So you could see what I see. This city gave me my beautiful beginning and my miracle middle and now, I can only hope against hope that it will give me my enviable end."

Without another word, he suddenly dropped to one knee.

The most magnificent of diamonds glinted like ice in the serene sunset.

"Miss Anastasia Steele, will you do me the greatest honor of becoming Mrs Anastasia Grey?"

….

TBC

….


	26. Chapter 26

The smile on her face was the widest it had ever known.

He was a natural. Despite all his self-doubts and self-deprecation, he was an absolute natural. She watched as he hoisted Miranda, or Mindy as they called her, high above his head and spun her around and around, her peals of laughter ringing alongside the summertime sounds of the outdoors. Her five-year-old hands clutched tightly around her father's fingers, holding on for dear life, but there was no need.

He would never let her fall.

Setting her down and hushing her squeals of discontent, he led her over to where her brother and mother sat. Holding out her arms wide, Ana laughed when her little girl launched herself into them and snuggled deeply into her shoulder. Smoothing her raven-dark hair, Ana breathed in her scent and marvelled at the consistent degree of joy it brought her.

"Were you having fun with daddy?"

Warm brown eyes peeked up at her as the child gave an earnest nod.

"He's learning how to do the spinner, mommy. It's taking him a little while, but he's getting there… he's trying _real_ hard."

Catching the tail-end of her comment as he sat down, Christian grinned widely.

"I sure am," he agreed, "But I'm going to need some more help, will you show me again after your picnic?"

Springing up in her mother's lap, Miranda nodded vigorously.

"Yes!"

Anastasia frowned over the thick mop of hair.

"Well, _after_ your dinner has settled, Mindy. Or else you'll throw up all over daddy's head, and we wouldn't want that now would we?"

"Actually; the likelihood of bringing on an incident of vomiting after vigorous exercise or a state of imbalance is only a fraction of a percent," Aaron interrupted casually. "Our brains are merely preprogramed to recall negative incidents with more regularity and clarity than positive incidents, so we just _think_ we throw up more often after being frightened or dizzy. But we don't, not really."

Christian smiled proudly at his ten-year-old son.

Aaron Raymond Grey was the first child they adopted, at seven years old. Miranda Grace Grey, they adopted as a new-born. At just ten years old, Aaron was reading and writing at a ninth-grade level and had won more scholastic competitions than even he could remember. With an IQ of one-hundred-and-forty-one, he was technically considered a genius. He was their pride and joy, but not just for his gifts. He was a shy, but incredibly sweet and endearing boy. Christian shared a special bond with him as Aaron too, had experienced a rough start to life. Born to a teenage and disadvantaged mother, he was abandoned on the steps of a church that happened to be under review, and was thus not operational.

A full day and night had passed by before the small bundle stopped crying.

Another full day and night had passed before he was discovered.

The doctors said it was a miracle he survived, that he was a fighter, a survivor. That the unusually warm summer had been his only reprieve from a near certain death. His ordeal had not left him unmarked however, and he had required extensive surgery at four years old and was therefore deemed "unadoptable" by the orphanage that cared for him. No-one ever asked to see him, to meet him, to have anything to do with him once they were informed of the upcoming medical care required.

But they had.

And the minute they did, they had fallen head-over-heels in love with him.

His medical treatment was cutting edge and he was now as healthy and happy as any ten-year-old boy should be. He loved his baby sister and insisted on being the one to read to her at night, on the basis that his parents were far too old to be aware of current five-year-old issues. For her part, Miranda adored her big brother and trotted after him here, there and everywhere. That was until, even the ever-patient Aaron, grew tired of her five-million questions and hollered for his mom or dad to retrieve her.

There's was a special and yet, typical, sibling relationship.

Ana leaned back in Christian's open arms as Mindy scampered over to show Aaron an imaginary cut on her finger. The windows of the family home were open, and the smell of the nearly-there dinner wafted out over the luscious green grass of their backyard. Tipping her head up and appraising her happily smiling husband, Ana felt the familiar urge to pinch herself. There were happy endings, and there was _their_ happy ending. Her infertility hadn't gotten in the way of their family, in fact, quite the opposite… it made their children even more precious to them. At thirty-three she was young, healthy and happy. At thirty-nine, he was equally as blessed.

They were all healthy and happy.

"Hello, Mrs Grey. You look beat."

She smiled up at him with a flicker of something more in her eyes, and lowered her voice.

"I am beat, Mr Grey, because _you_ beat me."

He smirked and the twenty-seven-year-old mogul she fell for was represented in his face. Stroking her defined cheekbones, he shrugged with absolutely no repentance. Dropping his voice to a whisper, barely audible above their children's chattering, he gazed down at her with the same adoration she brought out in him from ground zero.

"If you're referring to the _very_ well-earned spanking from this morning-"

"It was the _tiniest_ eye-roll and-"

"Careful now, wifey dear. My palms still have twitching stamina."

She glowered up at him, but softened when he laughed musically down at her. They'd had their ups and their downs over the years, their screaming matches and their wars about night time feeds and proper winding techniques… but his laugh still gave birth to the flutter of butterfly wings in her tummy. His chuckles were more common than uncommon these days, but she still treasured each one. The kids had been the making of Christian Trevelyan-Grey. He took to being a father like a duck to water. Whenever Miranda refused to settle as a baby, he would take her up in his arms and using one hand, would softly play the piano and sing to her.

It never, ever failed to work.

When Aaron was being bullied by jealous kids at school, he found it within himself to _not_ march up to the principle's office and rip his head off. Instead, he explained to his son that those kids _were_ just jealous and therefore threatened by his brilliance. Aaron had promptly taken it upon himself to offer said kids help with their lessons and now the four boys, two years on, were firm friends and borderline inseparable. The teaching staff wanted to move Aaron up two or three grades, but they had decided against it. Ana and Christian wanted their son to have an unhurried childhood, and satisfied his increased capacity for learning with out of school tuition and music lessons.

Laying on the red-checkered blanket, a now familiar pain shattered Ana's bliss.

A wince crossed her face as her land instinctively shot up to caress her stomach. It was a biting pain, a searing pain. The kind that was similar to a flash in the pan, it came suddenly and left just as abruptly. It had been bothering her for about three weeks and her hope was that it was just the twinges of being run-down, or fatigued. Being a working mom with two kids and married to one of the busiest, wealthiest men in America… was energy consuming. It was natural to feel exhausted, and she'd convinced herself that the shooting pain was just her body's way of asking her to slow down.

Christian's face swam into focus as the pain subsided.

"Ana? Are you ok? Is there something wrong with your stomach?"

His voice was low and urgent, deliberately quiet so as not to alert the children.

She smiled feebly.

"I'm fine, it's nothing. Just women's problems."

He frowned and reached down to rub her slender stomach.

"But you're not due your _women's problems_ for another week and a half."

She shook her head with a tiredly amused grin playing about her lips.

"You realize no other husband in the world is that accurate about such matters?"

He smirked and pressed a kiss atop her head.

"That's because you hit the husband jackpot, Mrs Grey. I am one in a million."

"That's one of the reasons I married you, you know, your _humility."_

"You want to be humiliated? I'm sure that can be arranged, I could-"

"Get up, shut up, and bring the kids inside to wash up. Dinner's just about ready and I don't need you spilling the fruits of my labor by bringing it out here. Make sure they _actually_ wash up, too. Not like last time. And that goes for you as well… even megalomaniac millionaires get dirty hands."

His eyes widened in sarcastic hurt.

" _Millionaires?"_ he whispered in horror, "You think I'm a measly millionaire? That _we're_ measly millionaires? I'm hurt. I'm shocked, I'm downright appalled that you could think so little of your sensationally beautiful husband-"

"If my lasagne burns because of your self-adoration, you're going to be my sensationally beautiful _ex-_ husband. Now move that tight little ass of yours and get our children ready for their dinner."

Rolling his eyes, and enjoying the double standard as he did so, he obediently hauled himself up and brushed himself down.

"Mindy, Aaron… time to go wash up. Let's go."

The usual chorus of groans met his announcement.

He held up a silencing hand and grinned a mischievous grin.

"Last one to the house is on wash-up duty. So, I suggest that you-"

He didn't get another word in edgeways. Both kids sprang to their feet and raced towards the brightly painted home with shrieks of competition. Christian stood and watched them go with amusement on his face until Aaron shouted a warning over his shoulder.

"You said last one to the house, dad, that includes _you."_

Narrowing his eyes at the retreating back of his child prodigy, Christian smirked with pride and rolled his eyes at his wife before taking off after his son and daughter at a pace that belied his thirty-nine years. Ana watched with happiness in her heart as he gained ground on the sprinting kids and scooped Mindy up in his arms, racing with her against his sprinting son. Their shouts wafted out over the garden as they disappeared into the house and another shooting pain screeched across her intestines.

This time, her eyes watered with the pain, and a small gasp tore from her lips.

She couldn't deny the fact that far from going away, the pain was getting worse.

Much worse.

As it surged across her stomach for the third time, she resolved there and then to schedule an appointment with the doctor for as soon as possible. Dragging herself to her feet as the chorus of _mom_ rang out of the windows, fatigue gripped her, and she paled with the effort. Her sermons that all was well were rapidly running out of steam and she was beginning to prickle with anxiety. She breathed deeply as the pain subsided and bubbled into nothingness, leaving no trace behind.

Tomorrow.

She would go to the doctor tomorrow.

By the time they got the kids and the dinner back out to the picnic blanket, she was even more exhausted. Several times she caught Christian looking at her in concern. She smiled widely at him every time, assuaging his worries. She would tell him later on, when the kids were in bed. It had been hard, but she had learned to open up and tell him everything that was going on with her, whilst still retaining a normal sense of privacy. He too, had made similar progress and their marriage had bloomed as a result. Somehow, the six years they had spent apart had been their making, made them more appreciative of the other… forced them to learn hard lessons with zero chance of relapsing into old ways. Several hours later, the kids were bathed and in bed, and she was free to collapse on the sofa.

Joining her, Christian drew her into his arms and carded a hand through her hair.

"You want to tell me what's really going on with you now?"

Looking up into the gray eyes that had first captivated her, she nodded slowly. Breathing in his familiar scent and absorbing the heat from his warm torso, which she could now touch freely, she ran his white shirt through her hands. It was probably nothing, but… deep down, she could _feel_ there was something wrong.

And it terrified her.

"I've been having this really weird and sharp pain across my stomach for the last few weeks. They come and go, they don't last long, and I never know when they're going to happen. I'm feeling tired all the time and everything… I don't know, everything is just _harder_ than it used to be. Doing Mindy's hair, fixing Aaron's lunch, dealing with all the crap in the office… I'm exhausted. I'm exhausted from doing all the things that never exhausted me before and I'm… worried, Christian, I'm worried…"

His face exploded with overt concern and his pupils dilated with anxiety.

Before both melted away and his compassionate confidence took over.

"Listen to me and listen very closely, Ana. You and I are going to Dr Coyne first thing tomorrow morning, he will clear his schedule and he will do it without complaint or delay. We will get to the bottom of this and whatever needs to happen, if anything, will happen. Whether it's a simple infection or something more, one thing is for sure…"

He tipped her head upwards with a gentle thumb and burned her with his intensity.

"I will not allow anything to happen to you. I will not allow any harm to come to you and I will not allow any impact on your quality of life. The world's best doctors are at our disposal, Dr Coyne is a leading diagnostician and he will have answers for us tomorrow, no waiting around for test results or any of that bullshit. Everything is going to be ok, I promise you. Alright?"

She smiled at him and his pool of earnest conviction.

She knew how blessed she was as she nodded quietly.

Precious few women found their Christian Grey.

"Right, I'm going to go and run you a bath which you're going to take _alone_ so you can actually relax. Mrs Jones has fresh sheets on the bed and I'm pretty sure I remembered to pick up that ghastly _Grey's Anatomy_ boxset you asked me to bring home. It might just be on your pillow, alongside those fuzzy pyjamas that you pretend you're _much_ too distinguished for, but secretly love. I'll be up with a cup of Twining's when you're done, and you and I can watch McGreasy or whoever he is the save the world until you fall asleep. Deal?"

A surge of love shot through her as she digested his thoughtfulness.

"It's McDreamy," she corrected softly, "And… thank you, Christian… I already feel a bit calmer."

He smiled softly.

"McDreamy," he agreed, "And that, Mrs Grey, is my job as your husband. And it's a job I take very seriously indeed, so why don't you wait here for a minute and I'll call you when your bath is ready, ok?"

Kissing her head as she nodded tiredly, he disentangled himself with a confident smile. It wasn't until he got to the safety of their master bathroom that he allowed his sickening concern to splash across his face. Worry gripped his gut as it churned painfully. Over the roar of the gushing tap, he extracted his cell and dialled a number impatiently. A professional voice picked up on the third ring and he wasted no time with social niceties.

"Dr Coyne, it's Christian Grey. My wife is feeling unwell and you need to clear your schedule for tomorrow morning to see her. We will be at your office at nine AM sharp and I want absolutely no delay on any tests that might need to be run, or the results of same. You're going to give this matter your full and undivided attention, or I will rain a level of hell down upon you that will make you yearn for the day it all ends. Are we clear?"

Dr Richard Coyne threw his eyes up to high heaven.

When it came to demanding patients, Christian Grey took the trophy.

But he knew which battles were wise to pick and which were wise to avoid.

"Certainly, Mr Grey. I will be ready and waiting."

Without so much as a _thank you_ or a _by your leave,_ the call ended.

The water was just right when he called her up, his face once again a mask of controlled confidence. If she saw him worry, she would worry twice as hard and he _wasn't_ about to allow that to happen. No way, no how. She protested when he tenderly moved to undress her, stating she could quite easily do it herself. But she melted under his soft fingers and allowed him to pool her clothes to her ankles and bodily lift her into the bath, flicking on the infernal mood candle creation she had bought. It filled the room with subdued and subtle light. He hated it and wanted to get rid of it, she loved it and wanted to keep it… so they compromised, and it stayed right where it was.

Proof that even the Christian Greys of the world could be tamed.

To an extent.

The night was a quiet affair. She rested in his arms, smelling subtly of salon shampoo and strawberry bubble bath. The kids slept soundly as they watched, to his mind, the inanest programme known to man and to her mind, the most addictively impressive programme known to man. They spoke no more of their impending appointment and as she drifted off to sleep in his arms, Christian sent off an email to Ros telling her to man the ship until he got back.

He didn't sleep a wink that night.

Ana slept fitfully, but she didn't wake during the night to see him staring moodily into the distance. Terror wasn't something he experienced very often and when he did, he wasn't sure how to deal with it. Medical matters, despite what he had told Anastasia, were outside his circle of control. He couldn't dictate to a disease how it could and couldn't unfold in the body of the woman who had saved him. He couldn't reach into her organs and remove anything that ought not to be there. All he could do was ensure that the best and the brightest were on the case, and that much, he had done.

He tried to reassure himself that it was probably just a bug.

Or more than likely just the stress of being a working mom.

By the time morning broke, he had nearly convinced himself. But as she stirred in his arms and he glanced down at her, those convictions left him. He could not lose her… he could not lose any part of her. She blinked blearily up at him and stretched out like a cat.

"Morning… did you sleep well?"

"Like a baby," he lied smoothly, "I'm going to go and get the kids up a little earlier than usual and I'll drop them off at my parents' house. They can take them to school, and we can go straight to the doctors. Mrs Jones has breakfast on the counter, granola, try and eat something when you're ready to get up and I'll be right back, ok?"

She nodded sleepily, and he slipped out of their king-sized bed.

He was showered and dressed in record time and made short work of cajoling two very unimpressed kids into doing the same. Grace could sense something was slightly amiss as he arrived at his family home in a mild state of agitation, but wisely held her tongue and busied herself with her grandchildren. She knew her son, and he would clam up tighter than an oyster if pressed when he wasn't ready to talk. She and the kids waved him off as his black SUV sped out of the driveway.

He was back home within twenty-one minutes.

Speed limits were for the unmarried and the poor.

Ana was eating a bowl of granola and yoghurt when he barrelled back in, smoothing his features into CEO-esque calm as he went. She smiled as he sat down opposite her and bridled with the need to _do_ something. Reading him like a book, she swallowed down a hurried mouthful and stood up.

"Shall we go?"

Already halfway out the door, Christian nodded.

"Sooner we get there, sooner we can leave with no more worries."

She rolled his eyes at his back, but squealed when he turned sharply and with a fleeting moment of carefree fun, swatted her sharply across the jean-clad backside with a grin blooming across his face.

"I have eyes in the back of my head, Mrs Grey. _No more eye rolling."_

She bit her lip, her eyes darkened with lust. Glancing at her watch, she hesitated.

"I don't suppose we have time for a quick-"

He groaned.

"Why must I always be the responsible one? _No,_ we do not have a time for a quick… as much as it breaks my fucking heart, we have to go."

She raised a brow.

"You? The responsible one? Have you been drinking?"

Grinning, he threw an arm around her shoulder and steered the way from their home to the driveway. She intertwined her fingers with his and fiddled with his wedding ring. When they slid into the SUV, he curled his hand around hers and drove one-handed. They didn't speak about where they were going, filling the car with chatter about the kids and their plans for the week. By the time they pulled into Dr Coyne's surgery however, the car sung with silence.

Neither were able to feign calm any longer.

It was exhausting.

From the moment they entered the pristine waiting area, everything passed by in a blur. An expertly trained receptionist guided them straight through to the doctor's office and he took the reigns with immediacy. It took a little bit of a struggle, but the experienced medic managed to convince Christian to leave the room whilst he conducted some tests and asked a few questions. The nurses that roamed the halls gave him a wide berth as he stalked up and down the corridors with a scowl more befitting a dehorned bull than a patient's husband.

After an eternity, the door opened, and Anastasia emerged.

Christian practically fell over himself as he rose and melted to her side.

"Well," he demanded as gently as he could, which wasn't very gently at all, "What did he say? What did he find? What is he going to do? Are we going to need to bring in-"

"He needs to look over some of the scans that he took," Ana interrupted before he could descend into convulsions, "He said he'll call us back in when he is ready. The bloods he took are still in the lab, so if the results of the scans are inconclusive, we'll have to wait a little while longer for those to come through."

Christian glowered.

"I _told_ that little prick that I didn't want _any_ delay in processing-"

"Christian, there isn't a delay. They're processing the blood as fast blood can be physically processed. We're ahead of everyone else in the queue, they can do no more than that. We just have to wait, I'm sure it's nothing and we've just made a big fuss about _nothing._ So, just sit down, stop the pacing I know you've been doing and wait with me. Ok?"

He inhaled deeply and tore a hand through his coppery hair.

"Ok," he sighed in defeat, extending a hand to her, "Ok."

Another eternity seemed to pass before the doctor's office door creaked open once more and an earnest looking man poked his balding head out. Glancing up and down the halls with intelligent and kind eyes, he beckoned when he saw the waiting couple in the seating area.

"Mr and Mrs Grey, could you come through?"

His hand gripped hers tighter than tight as he led the way. The office was opulent and contained equipment that no standard doctor possessed in their private workspace. Gesturing to the seats in front of his desk, Dr Coyne settled behind the impressive mahogany frame and with a flick of a remote, buzzed a nearby screen into action.

"Now, I think I have discovered the source of your pain and your fatigue Mrs Grey and in your circumstances… I must say, I am very surprised at the cause. I wouldn't go so far as to say it is medically impossible, but it _is_ medically improbable to the extreme. Hence the delay in examining the images I took, I wanted to make double and triple sure that I was correct in my diagnosis and prognosis. And I am now satisfied that I am correct, there is no mistaking the condition."

Christian paled, his mouth ran dry and his eyes bulged to zombie-esque levels.

Ana stared straight ahead, breathing deeper than deep, and braced herself.

Dr Coyne gave another flick of the remote and a fuzzy image appeared on the screen, sharpening with every passing second. Their heads turned as one to examine the grainy image, but neither had the faintest idea what it was or how sinister it may be. Fiddling with the remote, Dr Coyne increased the contrast and decreased the brightness, bringing the image into sharper focus, seemingly oblivious to the fact that the husband and wife before him were descending into a state of paralytic fear.

Finally satisfied, he turned to the couple and fiddled with his tie.

"The reason for your pain and tiredness, Mrs Grey, is down to the fact that your body is adjusting to a previously unexperienced condition."

He smiled as he turned to the monitor, and pointed out a large mass, curled in a u-shaped position.

"You're pregnant, Mrs Grey. You're about three and a half months along."

She shook her head through a haze as Christian's mouth fell open like a trap door.

"…that… that's not _possible,_ Doctor Coyne, I'm infertile. I was diagnosed years ago. I was told that a pregnancy was completely impossible and even if by some miracle it were to occur, it would be an unsustainable pregnancy, with huge risks to both myself and the baby."

Her voice seemed assured and well-informed.

But her world was shattering before her, the beliefs she had believed for an eternity were crumbling at her feet. Christian's hand tightened around hers as he stared at the doctor in abject disbelief. In turn, Dr Coyne's lips tightened in disapproval and he cleared his throat delicately.

"Yes, I've had a look at your records from the clinic you attended in New York… and I believe, quite firmly, that although they were right in their diagnosis… they were entirely misinformed in their prognosis. Your condition has a relatively appreciable chance of organic change as you age. The scarring they found on your womb has healed itself over many years, quite remarkably so, allowing for the more regular production of viable eggs and decreasing the difficulty of fertilization with a viable sperm. It's not common, but it's not unheard of. There is a theory, as of yet in its infancy, that suggests a direct and causal link to the overall physical and mental well-being of a patient and the body's ability to heal itself. The control of the mind over the body is a growing area of study, but all embryonic results suggest that the psychological has a huge impact on the physical, we just don't understand how or why as of yet."

He paused and pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose.

"Have you experienced a significant change of circumstance between the time of your diagnosis in New York and today?"

They exchanged stunned glances and were far too shocked to answer.

Dr Coyne continued regardless.

"I can see no physical abnormalities at this stage, and this imaging system is the best that modern medicine can provide. Your other scans are completely normal, and I am quite confident that your bloods will also be regular. All your symptoms fit with pregnancy and although I'd like to closely monitor you throughout, I don't see any cause to be especially concerned at this stage."

He cleared his throat.

"I appreciate that this is a lot to take in, would you like to take a moment?"

Once again, they exchanged amazed glances, neither in a position to process how they felt about the most unexpected of news. Christian's hand never left Ana's as he licked his dry lips and forced himself to be pragmatic.

"You're sure?" he demanded, "You're _absolutely_ sure that this… this pregnancy doesn't represent a risk to my wife and that the… child… that the child doesn't have any medical issues we should know about?"

Dr Coyne nodded with the confidence of a man who dominated his field.

"I'm quite sure, Mr Grey. Nothing at all about this scan suggests it is any different from any of the other thousand pregnancies I have supervised. Like I say, given the element of surprise surrounding this _particular_ pregnancy, I would like to keep a careful eye on both Mrs Grey and the child… but right now, there is no cause for alarm. I give you my word, as your doctor and as a father myself."

Ana closed her eyes and opened them to expose tears of shocked joy.

"I'm _pregnant?"_ she whispered, "I'm really _pregnant?"_

Dr Coyne nodded genially.

"Yes, Mrs Grey, you really are."

Blinking in blindingly strong joy, she turned to Christian to see the same shocked euphoria etched into every line of his face. They spoke a thousand words with a single glance, each telling the other the story of their awed and almost painful happiness. Gripping the other's hand tighter than could be termed romantic, they turned back to the doctor and spoke as one.

"Is it a boy or a girl?"

Glancing back at the scan to quadruple check, Dr Coyne smiled.

"It's a little girl."

Christian beamed from ear-to-ear as Ana sagged with the effort of sustaining her joy. They turned to each other once more, forgetting that Dr Coyne even existed, let alone that he was in the room. Christian spoke softer than softly, eying his wife with proud amazement.

"A little girl… we're going to have another little girl."

She licked her dry lips.

"You're ready to do this? You're ready to have another child?"

He pushed a stray lock of dark hair from her bright blue eyes.

"Ana, I'm ready for anything life throws at us. The fact that it's a _baby girl_ … just means I'm readier than I've ever been in my life. Aaron is going to be a natural big brother for the second time and Mindy's going to be the most amazing big sister. And you… you're going to be just as fantastic a mother to this child as you are to the kids we already have and love. Are you ready for that?"

She blinked, and a boiling tear of ecstasy glistened onto her cheek.

"You remember what I said to you on our wedding day?"

He glowed as his mouth formed the whispered words.

 _"_ _You and I are forever and forever we shall be, whether we be one or two or three..."_

She beamed with a smile of watery euphoria, vibrating with an almost ethereal joy.

"Well, I got the math wrong, Mr Grey. Y _ou and I are forever and forever we shall be, whether we be one or two or three…"_

She shone like the morning sun and inhaled a breath of dizzying glee.

" _Or five."_

…..

 **The End!** I hope you've all enjoyed this story, it was my first foray into FSoG and I haven't looked back since! Thank you all SO much for the support on this one, it is truly and dearly appreciated! Until next time, Inks xx

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